
Class _ 111 

Book , / JL. 
Copyright N° ; 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 



•t^2^< 



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A Seaside Garden. 



THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 



BY 



BARBARA 

AUTHOR OF 

"THE GARDEN OF A COMMUTER'S WIFE," "PEOPLE OF 

THE WHIRLPOOL," "AT THE SIGN OF THE 

FOX," ETC. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON : MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1906 

All rights reserved 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Cooies Received 

MAV 28 1906 

Copyright Entry . 
CLASS ' <J/ xxc, No. 

'«/> 9 3U 

COPY' B. 



h 



% 



/ 






Copyright, 1906, 
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 

Set up and electrotyped. Published June, 1906. 



Nortoooti JPresa 

J. S. Gushing & Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. 

Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 







2Detstcat£D 

TO 

J. L. G. 
I. M. T. 

AND 

A. B. P. 

THE LITERARY GARDENERS 
OF REDDING 



GREETING 

This book is for those who in treading the garden 
path have no thought of material gain ; rather must 
they give, — from the pocket as they may, — from 
the brain much, — and from the heart all, — if they 
would drink in full measure this pure joy of living. 

" Allons ! the road is before us ! 
It is safe — I have tried it — my own feet 
have tried it well — be not detained." 

— Walt Whitman. 



CONTENTS 



i. 

ii. 

in. 

IV. 

V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 



XI. 

XII. 

XIII. 

XIV. 

XV. 



The Ways of the Wind . 

The Book of the Garden, You, and I 

Concerning Hardy Plants 

Their Garden Vacation . 

Annuals — Worthy and Unworthy 

Their Fortunate Escape . 

A Simple Rose Garden 

A Midnight Adventure 

Ferns, Fences, and White Birches 

Frankness — Gardening and Otherwise 

List of Flower Combinations for the Table 

from Barbara's Garden Boke 
A Seaside Garden .... 
The Transplanting of Evergreens 
Lilies and their Whims . 
Fragrant Flowers and Leaves 
The Pink Family Outdoors 



i 

7 

29 
48 
70 
92 
117 

155 
183 
202 

230 

233 
246 
262 

28* 
305 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 

XVI. The Frame of the Picture . 

XVII. The Ins and Outs of the Matter 

XVIII. The Value of White Flowers 

XIX. Pandora's Chest .... 

XX. Epilogue 



PAGE 
320 

336 

352 

365 

374 



APPENDIX 

For the Hardy Seed Bed 375 

Some Worthy Annuals 387 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

A Seaside Garden (see p. 243) . . . Frontispiece 

FACING PAGE 

"The magnolias below at the road-bend" . . 8 
English Larkspur Seven Feet High .... 32 
Fraxinella — German Iris and Candy-tuft . .44 

Longfellow's Garden 81 

The Summer Garden — Verbenas .... 86 

Asters 90 

The Pictorial Value of Evergreens . . . 102 
" My ROSES ARE scattered here, there, and every- 
where" 119 

Madame Plantier at Van Cortland Manor . .128 

A Convenient Rose-bed 138 

"The last of the old orchard" . . . .156 

The Screen of White Birches 166 

"An endless shelter for every sort of wild 

thing" 184 

Speciosum Lilies in the Shade ..... 270 

The Poet's Narcissus 278 

xi 



xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING PAGE 

A Bed of Japan Pinks 296 

Single and Double Pinks 314 

" The silver maple by the lane gate " . . 326 

" a curtain to the side porch " .... 328 

An Iris Hedge 358 

Daphne Cneorum 360 

A Terrible Example 362 

" The low snow-covered meadow " . . . . 372 

" Punch . . . has a cache under the syringa bushes " 374 



THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 
I 

THE WAYS OF THE WIND 

"Out of the veins of the world comes the blood of me; 
The heart that beats in my side is the heart of the sea; 
The hills have known me of old, and they do not forget; 
Long ago was I friends with the wind ; I am friends with it yet." 

— Gerald Gould. 

Whenever a piece of the land is to be set apart for a 
garden, two mighty rulers must be consulted as to the 
boundaries. When this earth child is born and flower 
garnished for the christening, the same two must be 
also bidden as sponsors. These rulers are the Sun and 
the Wind. The sun, if the matter in hand is once 
fairly spread before him and put in his charge, is a 
faithful guardian, meeting frankness frankly and send- 
ing his penetrating and vitalizing messengers through 
well-nigh inviolable shade. But of the wind, who shall 
answer for it or trust it ? Do we really ever learn all of 
its vagaries and impossible possibilities ? 

If frankness best suits the sun, diplomacy must be 



2 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

our shield of defence windward, for the wind is not 
one but a composite of many moods, and to lure one on, 
and skilfully, but not insultingly bar out another, is our 
portion. To shut out the wind of summer, the bearer 
of vitality, the uplifter of stifling vapours, the disperser 
of moulds, would indeed be an error ; therefore, the great 
art of the planters of a garden is to learn the ways of 
the wind and to make friends with it. If the soil is 
sodden and sour, it may be drained and sweetened; 
if it is poor, it may be nourished; but when all this is 
done, if the garden lies where the winds of winter and 
spring in passing swiftly to and fro whet their steel- 
edged tempers upon it, what avails? 

What does it matter if violet or pansy frames are set 
in a sunny nook, if it be one of the wind's winter play- 
grounds, where he drifts the snow deep for his pastime, 
so that after each storm of snow or sleet a serious bit of 
engineering must be undergone before the sashes can 
be lifted and the plants saved from dampness; or if 
the daffodils and tulips lie well bedded all the winter 
through, if, when the sun has called them forth, the 
winds of March blight their sap-tender foliage? Yet 
the lands that send the north winds also send us the 
means to deter them — the cold-loving evergreens, low 
growing, high growing, medium, woven dense in warp 



THE WAYS OF THE WIND 3 

and woof, to be windbreaks, also the shrubs of tough, 
twisted fibre and stubborn thorns lying close to the 
earth for windbuffers. 

Therefore, before the planting of rose or hardy herbs, 
bulbs or tenderer flowers, go out, compass in hand, face 
the four quarters of heaven, and, considering well, set 
your windbreaks of sweeping hemlocks, pines, spruces, 
not in fortress- like walls barring all the horizon, but in 
alternate groups that flank, without appearing to do so 
heavily, the north and northwest. Even a barberry 
hedge on two sides of a garden, wedge point to north, 
like the wild-goose squadrons of springtime, will 
make that spot an oasis in the winter valley of 
death. 

A wise gardener it is who thinks of the winter in 
springtime and plants for it as surely as he thinks of 
spring in the winter season and longs for it ! If, in the 
many ways by which the affairs of daily life are re- 
enforced, the saying is true that " forethought is coin in 
the pocket, quiet in the brain, and content in the heart," 
doubly does it apply to the pleasures of living, of which 
the outdoor life of working side by side with nature, 
called gardening, is one of the chief. When a garden is 
inherited, the traditions of the soil or reverence for those 
who planned and toiled in it may make one blind to 



4 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

certain defects in its conception, and beginning with a 
priori set by another one does as one can. 

But in those choosing site, and breaking soil for them- 
selves, inconsistency is inexcusable. Follow the lay 
of the land and let it lead. Nature does not attempt 
placid lowland pictures on a steep hillside, nor dramatic 
landscape effects in a horizonless meadow, therefore 
why should you ? For one great garden principle you 
will learn from nature's close companionship — con- 
sistency ! 

You who have a bit of abrupt hillside of im- 
poverished soil, yet where the sky-line is divided in a 
picture of many panels by the trees, you should not try 
to perch thereon a prim Dutch garden of formal lines ; 
neither should you, to whom a portion of fertile level 
plain has fallen, seek to make it picturesque by a tor- 
tuous maze of walks, curving about nothing in particular 
and leading nowhere, for of such is not nature. Either 
situation will develop the skill, though in different direc- 
tions, and do not forget that in spite of better soil it 
takes greater individuality to make a truly good and 
harmonious garden on the flat than on the rolling 
ground. 

I always tremble for the lowlander who, down in the 
depth of his nature, has a prenatal hankering for rocks, 



THE WAYS OF THE WIND 5 

because he is apt to build an undigested rockery ! 
These sort of rockeries are wholly separate from the 
rock gardens, often majestic, that nowadays supplement 
a bit of natural rocky woodland, bringing it within the 
garden pale. The awful rockery of the flat garden is 
like unto a nest of prehistoric eggs that have been turned 
to stone, from the interstices of which a few wan vines 
and ferns protrude somewhat, suggesting the garnishing 
for an omelet. 

Also, if you follow Nature and study her devices, you 
will alone learn the ways of the winds and how to pre- 
pare for them. Where does Spring set her first flag 
of truce — out in the windswept open? 

No ! the arbutus and hepatica He bedded not alone in 
the fallen leaves of the forest but amid their own endur- 
ing foliage. The skunk cabbage raises his hooded head 
first in sheltered hollows. The marsh marigold lies in 
the protection of bog tussocks and stream banks. The 
first bloodroot is always found at the foot of some 
natural windbreak, while the shad-bush, that ventures 
farther afield and higher in air than any, is usually set 
in a protecting hedge, like his golden forerunner the 
spice-bush. 

If Nature looks to the ways of the wind when she 
plants, why should not we? A bed of the hardiest 



6 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

roses set on a hill crest is a folly. Much more likely 
would they be to thrive wholly on the north side of it. 
A garden set in a cut between hills that form a natural 
blowpipe can at best do no more than hold its own, 
without advancing. 

But there are some things that belong to the 
never-never land and may not be done here. You 
may plant roses and carnations in the shade or in 
dry sea sand, but they will not thrive ; you cannot keep 
upland lilies cheerful with their feet in wet clay ; you 
cannot have a garden all the year in our northern lati- 
tudes, for nature does not; and you cannot afford to 
ignore the ways of the wind, for according as it is kind 
or cruel does it mean garden life or death ! 

" Men, they say, know many things ; 
But lo, they have taken wings, — 
The arts and sciences, 

And a thousand appliances; 
The wind that blows 

Is all that anybody knows. " 

— Thoreatj. 



II 

THE BOOK OF THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

April 30. Gray dawn, into which father and Evan 
vanished with their fishing rods ; then sunrise, curtained 
by a slant of rain, during which the birds sang on with 
undamped ardour, a catbird making his debut for the 
season as soloist. 

It must not be thought that I was up and out at dawn. 
At twenty I did so frequently, at thirty sometimes, 
now at thirty-five I can do it perfectly well, if necessary, 
otherwise, save at the change of seasons, to keep in 
touch with earth and sky, I raise myself comfortably, 
elbow on pillow, and through the window scan garden, 
wild walk, and the old orchard at leisure, and then let 
my arm slip and the impression deepen through the 
magic of one more chance for dreams. 

9 o'clock. The warm throb of spring in the earth, 
rising in a potent mist, sap pervaded and tangible, 
having a clinging, unctuous softness like the touch of 
unfolding beech leaves, lured me out to finish the trans- 
planting of the pansies among the hardy roses, while the 
first brown thrasher, high in the bare top of an ash, 

7 



8 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

eyes fixed on the sky, proclaimed with many turns and 
changes the exact spot where he did not intend to 
locate his nest. This is an early spring, of a truth. 

Presently pale sunbeams thread the mist, gathering 
colour as they filter through the pollen-meshed catkins 
of the black birches ; an oriole bugling in the Yulan 
magnolias below at the road-bend, fire amid snow; a 
high-hole laughing his courtship in the old orchard. 

Then Lavinia Cortright coming up to exchange 
Dahlia bulbs and discuss annuals and aster bugs. She 
and Martin browse about the country, visiting from 
door to door like veritable natives, while their garden, 
at first so prim and genteel, like one of Lavinia's own 
frocks, has broken bounds and taken on brocade, 
embroidery, and all sorts of lace frills, overflowed the 
south meadow, and only pauses at the stile in the wall 
of our old crab-apple orchard, rivalling in beauty and 
refined attraction any garden at the Bluffs. Martin's 
purse is fuller than of yore, owing to the rise in Whirl- 
pool real estate, and nothing is too good for Lavinia's 
garden. Even more, he has of late let the dust rest 
peacefully on human genealogy and is collecting quaint 
garden books and herbals, flower catalogues and lists, 
with the solemn intent of writing a book on Historic 
Flowers. At least so he declares ; but when Lavinia is 



BOOK OF THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 9 

in the garden, there too is Martin. To-clay, however, 
he joined my men before noon at the lower brook. 
Fancy a house-reared man a convert to fishing when 
past threescore ! Evan insists that it is because, be- 
ing above all things consistent, he wishes to appear at 
home in the company of father's cherished collection of 
Walton's and other fishing books. Father says, 
"Nonsense ! no man can help liking to fish !" 

Toward evening came home a creel lined with bog 
moss ; within, a rainbow glimmer of brook trout, a posy 
of shad- bush, marsh marigolds, anemones, and rosy 
spring beauties from the river woods, — with three 
cheerfully tired men, who gathered by the den hearth 
fire with coffee cup and pipe, inside an admiring but 
sleepy circle of beagle hounds, who had run free the 
livelong day and who could doubtless impart the latest 
rabbit news with thrilling detail. All this and much 
more made up to-day, one of red letters. 

Yesterday, Monday, was quite different, and if not 
absolutely black, was decidedly slate coloured. It is only 
when some one of the household is positively ill that 
the record must be set down in black characters, for 
what else really counts? Why is it that the city folk 
persist in judging all rural days alike, that is until they 
have once really lived in the country, not merely boarded 



io THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

and tried to kill time and their own digestions at one 
and the same moment. 

Such exceptional days as yesterday should only be 
chronicled now and then to give an added halo to happy 
to-morrows, — disagreeables are remembered quite 
long enough by perverse human nature. 

Yesterday began with the pipe from the water-back 
bursting, thereby doing away with hot water for shaving 
and the range fire at the same time. The coffee resented 
hurry, and the contact with an oil stove developed the 
peanutty side of its disposition, something that is latent 
in the best and most equable of brands. 

The spring timetable having changed at midnight 
Sunday, unobserved by Evan, he missed the early train, 
which it was especially important that he should take. 
Three other men found themselves in the same pre- 
dicament, two being Bluffers and one a Plotter. (These 
are the names given hereabout to our two colonies of 
non-natives. The Bluffers are the people of the Bluffs, 
who always drive to the station ; the Plotters, living on a 
pretty tract of land near the village that was "plotted" 
into house-lots a few years ago, have the usual new- 
comer's hallucination about making money from raising 
chickens, and always walk.) 

After a hasty consultation, one of the Bluffers tele- 



BOOK OF THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I n 

phoned for his automobile and invited the others to 
make the trip to town with him. In order to reach the 
north turnpike that runs fairly straight to the city, the 
chauffeur, a novice in local byways, proposed to take a 
short cut through our wood road, instead of wheeling 
into the pike below Wakeleigh. 

This wood road holds the frost very late, in spite of an 
innocent appearance to the contrary; this fact Evan 
stated tersely. Would a chauffeur of the Bluffs listen 
to advice from a man living halfway down the hill, who 
not only was autoless but frequently walked to the 
station, and therefore to be classed with the Plotters? 
Certainly not ; while at the same moment the owner of 
the car decided the matter by pulling out his watch and 
murmuring to his neighbour something about an im- 
portant committee meeting, and it being the one day in 
the month when time meant money ! 

Into the road they plunged, and after several hair- 
breadth lurches, for the cut is deep and in places the 
rocks parallel with the roadway, the turnpike was visible ; 
then a sudden jolt, a sort of groan from the motor, and it 
ceased to breathe, the heavy wheels having settled in a 
treacherous spot not wholly free from frost, its great 
stomach, or whatever they call the part that holds its 
insides, wallowed hopelessly in the mud ! 



12 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

The gentlemen from the Bluffs deciding that, after all, 
there was no real need of going to town, as they had only 
moved into the country the week previous, and the auto 
owner challenged to a game of billiards by his friend, 
they returned home, while the Plotter and Evan walked 
back two miles to the depot and caught the third train ! 

At home things still sizzled. Father had an important 
consultation at the hospital at ten; ringing the stable 
call for the horses, he found that Tim, evidently for- 
getting the hour, had taken them, Evan's also being of 
the trio, to the shoer half an hour before. There was a 
moment's consternation and Bertel left the digging over 
of my hardy beds to speed down to the village on his 
bicycle, and when the stanhope finally came up, father 
was as nearly irritable as I have ever seen him, while 
Tim Saunders's eyes looked extra small and pointed. 
Evidently Bertel had said things on his own account. 

Was an explosion coming at last to end twelve years of 
out-of-door peace, also involving my neighbour and 
domestic standby, Martha Corkle Saunders? 

No ; the two elderly men glanced at each other ; there 
was nothing of the domineering or resentful attitude 
that so often renders difficult the relation of master and 
man — "I must be getting old and forgetful," quoth 
father, stepping into the gig. 



BOOK OF THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 13 

"Nae, it's mair like I'm growin' deef in the nigh 
ear," said Tim, and without further argument they drove 
away. 

I was still pondering upon the real inwardness of the 
matter, when the boys came home to luncheon. Two 
hungry, happy boys are a tonic at any time, and for a 
time I buttered bread — though alack, the real necessity 
for so doing has long since passed — when, on explain- 
ing father's absence from the meal, Ian said abruptly, 
"Jinks! grandpa's gone the day before! he told Tim 
Tuesday at 'leven, I heard him!" 

But, as it chanced, it was a slip of tongue, not memory, 
and I blessed Timothy Saunders for his Scotch for- 
bearance, which Evan insists upon calling prudence. 

My own time of trial came in the early afternoon. 
During the more than ten years that I have been a gar- 
dener on my own account, I have naturally tried many 
experiments and have gradually come to the conclusion 
that it is a mistake to grow too many species of flowers, 
— better to have more of a kind and thus avoid spinki- 
ness. The pink family in general is one of those that 
has stood the test, and this year a cousin of Evan's sent 
me over a quantity of Margaret carnation seed from prize 
stock, together with that of some exhibition single 
Dahlias. 



14 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

Late in February I sowed the seed in two of the most 
protected hotbeds, muffled them in mats and old 
carpets every night, almost turned myself into a patent 
ventilator in order to give the carnations enough air 
during that critical teething period of pinks, when the 
first grasslike leaves emerge from the oval seed leaves 
and the little plants are apt to weaken at the ground 
level, damp off, and disappear, thinned them out with 
the greatest care, and had (day before yesterday) full 
five hundred lusty little plants, ready to go out into the 
deeply dug cool bed and there wax strong according 
to the need of pinks before summer heat gains the upper 
hand. 

The Dahlias had also thriven, but then they are less 
particular, and if they live well will put up with more 
snubs than will a carnation. 

Weather and Bertel being propitious, I prepared to 
plant out my pets, though of course they must be shel- 
tered of nights for another half month. As I was about 
to remove one of the props that held the sash aloft, to 
let in air to the Dahlias, and still constitute it a wind- 
break, I heard a violent whistling in our grass road 
north of the barn that divides the home acres from the 
upper pastures and Martha's chicken farm. At first 
I thought but little of it, as many people use it as a 



BOOK OF THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 15 

short cut from the back road from the Bluffs down to 
the village. Soon a shout came from the same direction, 
and going toward the wall, I saw Mr. Vandeveer strug- 
gling along, his great St. Bernard Jupiter, prize winner 
in a recent show and but lately released from winter 
confinement, bounding around and over him to such 
an extent that the spruce New Yorker, who had the 
reputation of always being on dress parade from the mo- 
ment that he left bed until he returned to it in hand- 
embroidered pink silk pajamas, was not only covered with 
abundant April mud,but could hardly keep his footing. 

At the moment I spied the pair, a great brindled cat, 
who sometimes ventures on the place, in spite of all the 
attentions paid her by the beagles, and who had been 
watching sparrows in the barnyard, sprang to the wall. 
Zip ! There was a rush, a snarl, a hiss, and a smash ! 
Dog and what had been cat crashed through the sash 
of my Dahlia frame, and in the rebound ploughed into 
the soft earth that held the carnations. 

The next minute Mr. Vandeveer absolutely leaped 
over the wall, and seeing the dog, apparently in the midst 
of the broken glass, turned almost apoplectic, shouting, 
"Ah, his legs will be cut; he'll be ruined, and Julie will 
never forgive me ! He's her best dog and cost $3000 
spot cash! Get him out, somebody, why don't you? 



16 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

What business have people to put such dangerous sky- 
lights near a public road?" 

Meanwhile, as wrath arose in my throat and formed 
ugly words, Jupiter, a great friend of ours, who has had 
more comfortable meals in our kitchen during the winter 
than the careless kennel men would have wished to be 
known, sprang toward me with well-meant, if rough, 
caresses, — evidently the few scratches he had amounted 
to nothing. I forgave him the cat cheerfully, but my 
poor carnations ! They do not belong to the grovelling 
tribe of herbs that bend and refuse to break like portu- 
laca, chickweed, and pusley the accursed. Fortunately, 
just then, a scene of the past year, which had come to me 
by report, floated across my vision. Our young hounds, 
Bob and Pete, in the heat of undisciplined rat-catching 
(for these dogs when young and unbroken will chase 
anything that runs), completely undermined the Van- 
deveers' mushroom bed, the door of the pit having been 
left open ! 

When Mr. Vandeveer recovered himself, he began 
profuse apologies. Would "send the glazier down 
immediately " — " so sorry to spoil such lovely young 
onions and spinach!" 

" What ! not early vegetables, but flowers ? " Oh, then 
he should not feel so badly. Really, he had quite for- 



BOOK OF THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 17 

gotten himself, but the truth was Julie thought more of 
her dogs and horses than even of himself, he sometimes 
thought, — almost, but not quite; "ha! ha! really, 
don't you know !" While, judging by the comparative 
behaviour of dog and man, the balance was decidedly 
in favour of Jupiter. But you see I never like men who 
dress like ladies, I had lost my young plants, and I love 
dogs from mongrel all up the ladder (lap dogs excepted), 
so I may be prejudiced. 

After Bertel had carefully removed the splintered 
glass from the earth, so that I could take account of 
my damaged stock, about half seemed to be redeem- 
able ; but even those poor seedlings looked like soldiers 
after battle, a limb gone here and an eye missing there. 

At supper father, Evan, and I were silent and cere- 
moniously polite, neither referring to the day's disasters, 
and I could see that the boys were regarding us with 
open-eyed wonder. When the meal was almost finished, 
the bell of the front door rang and Eme returned, bearing 
a large, ornamental basket, almost of the proportions of 
a hamper, with a card fastened conspicuously to the 
handle, upon which was printed "With apologies from 
Jupiter!" Inside was a daintily arranged assortment 
of hothouse vegetables, — cucumbers, tomatoes, egg- 
plant eggs, artichokes, — with a separate basket in one 



18 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

corner brimming with strawberries, and in the other a 
pink tissue-paper parcel, tied with ribbon, containing 
mushrooms, proving that, after all, fussy Mr. Vandeveer 
has the saving grace of humour. 

My righteous garden-indignation dwindled; laughter 
caught me by the throat and quenched the remainder. 
Evan, knowing nothing of the concatenation, but scent- 
ing something from the card, joined sympathetically. 
Glancing at father, I saw that his nose was twitching, and 
in a moment his shoulders began to shake and he led the 
general confession that followed. It seems that he 
arrived at the hospital really the day of the consultation, 
but found that the patient, in need of surgical care, had 
been seized with nervous panic and gone home ! 

After such a thoroughly vulgar day there is really 
nothing to do but laugh and plan something pleasant for 
to-morrow, unless you prefer crying, which, though 
frequently a relief to the spirit, is particularly bad for 
eye wrinkles in the middle-aged. 

May-day. I always take this as a holiday, and give 
myself up to any sort of outdoor folly that comes into 
my head. There is nothing more rejuvenating than to 
let one's self thoroughly go now and then. 

Then, besides, to an American, May-day is usually a 
surprise in itself. You never can tell what it will bring, 



BOOK OF THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 19 

for it is by no means the amiable and guileless child of 
the poets, breathing perfumed south wind and followed 
by young lambs through meadows knee deep in grass 
and flowers. 

In the course of fifteen years I have seen four May-days 
when there was enough grass to blow in the wind and 
frost had wholly left for the season ; to balance this there 
have been two brief snow squalls, three deluges that 
washed even big beans out of ground, and a scorching 
drought that reduced the brooks, unsheltered by 
leafage, to August shallowness. But to-day has been 
entirely lovable and full of the promise that after all 
makes May the garden month of the year, the time of 
perfect faith, hope, and charity when we may believe 
all things ! 

This morning I took a stroll in the woods, partly to 
please the dogs, for though they always run free, they 
smile and wag furiously when they see the symptoms 
that tell that I am going beyond the garden. What a 
difference there is between the north and south side of 
things ! On the south slope the hepaticas have gone and 
the columbines show a trace of red blood, while on the 
north, one is in perfection and the other only as yet 
making leaves. This is a point to be remembered in the 
garden, by which the season of blooming can be length- 



20 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

ened for almost all plants that do not demand full, 
unalloyed sun, like the rose and pink families. 

Every year I am more and more surprised at the hints 
that can be carried from the wild to the cultivated. 
For instance, the local soil in which the native plants of 
a given family flourish is almost always sure to agree 
better with its cultivated, and perhaps -tropical, cousin 
than the most elaborately and scientifically prepared 
compost. This is a matter that both simplifies and 
guarantees better success to the woman who is her own 
gardener and lives in a country sufficiently open for her 
to be able to collect soil of various qualities for special 
purposes. Lilies were always a very uncertain quantity 
with me, until the idea occurred of filling my bed with 
earth from a meadow edge where Lilium Canadense, 
year after year, mounted her chimes of gold and copper 
bells on leafy standards often four feet high. 

We may read and listen to cultural ways and methods, 
but when all is said and done, one who has not a fat purse 
for experiments and failures must live the outdoor life 
of her own locality to get the best results in the garden. 

Then to have a woman friend to compare notes with 
and prove rules by is a comforting necessity. No liv- 
ing being can say positively, "I will do so and so ; " or 
" I know," when coming in contact with the wise old earth ! 



BOOK OF THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 21 

Lavinia Cortright has only had a garden for half a 
dozen summers, and consults me as a veteran, yet I'm 
discovering quite as much from her experiments as she 
from mine. Last winter, when seed-catalogue time came 
round, and we met daily and scorched our shoes before 
the fire, drinking a great deal too much tea in the ex- 
citement of making out our lists, we resolved to form a 
horticulture society of only three members, of which 
she elected me the recording secretary, to be called 
"The Garden, You, and I." 

We expect to have a variety of experiences this 
season, and frequent meetings both actual and by pen, 
for Lavinia, in combination with Horace and Sylvia 
Bradford, last year built a tiny shore cottage, three 
miles up the coast, at Gray Rocks, where they are go- 
ing for alternate weeks or days as the mood seizes 
them, and they mean to try experiments with 
real seashore gardening, while Evan proposes that we 
should combine pleasure with business in a way to 
make frequent vacations possible and take driving trips 
together to many lovely gardens both large and small, 
to our mutual benefit, his eyes being open to construc- 
tion and landscape effect, and mine to the soul of the 
garden, as it were ; for he is pleased to say that a woman 
can grasp and translate this more easily and fully than 



22 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

a man. What if the records of The Garden, You, and I 
should turn into a real book, an humble shadow of "Six 
of Spades" of jovial memory ! Is it possible that I am 
about to be seized with Agamemnon Peterkin's ambition 
to write a book to make the world wise ? Alas, poor 
Agamemnon ! When he had searched the woods for an 
oak gall to make ink, gone to the post-office, after hours, 
to buy a sheet of paper, and caused a commotion in 
the neighbourhood and rumour of thieves by going to 
the poultry yard with a lantern to pluck a fresh goose 
quill for a pen, he found that he had nothing to say, 
and paused — thereby, at least, proving his own wisdom. 

I'm afraid I ramble too much to be a good recording 
secretary, but this habit belongs to my very own garden 
books that no critical eyes can see. That reminds me ! 
Father says that he met Bartram Penrose in town last 
week and that he seemed rather nervous and tired, and 
worried about nothing, and wanted advice. After look- 
ing him over a bit, father told him that all he needed was a 
long vacation from keeping train, as well as many other 
kindsof time, for it seems during the six years of his mar- 
riage he has had no real vacation but his honeymoon. 

Mary Penrose's mother, my mother, and Lavinia 
Cortright were all school friends together, and since 
Mary married Bartram and moved to Woodridge we've 



BOOK OF THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 23 

exchanged many little visits, for our husbands agree, and 
now that she has time she is becoming an enthusiastic 
gardener, after my own heart, having last season become 
convinced of the ugliness of cannas and coleus beds about 
a restored colonial farmhouse. Why might they not join 
us on our driving trips, by way of their vacation ? 

Immediately I started to telephone the invitation, 
and then paused. I will write instead. Mary Penrose 
is on the long-distance line, — toll thirty cents in the 
daytime ! In spring I am very stingy ; thirty cents 
means six papers of flower seeds, or three heliotropes. 
Whereas in winter it is simply thirty cents, and it must be 
a very vapid conversation indeed that is not worth so 
much on a dark winter day of the quality when neither 
driving nor walking is pleasant, and if you get sufficiently 
close to the window to see to read, you develop a stiff 
neck. Also, the difficulty is that thirty cents is only the 
beginning of a conversation betwixt Mary Penrose and 
myself, for whoever begins it usually has to pay for 
overtime, which provokes quarterly discussion. Is it 
not strange that very generous men often have such 
serious objections to the long-distance tails to their 
telephone bills, and insist upon investigating them with 
vigour, when they pay a speculator an extra dollar for a 
theatre ticket without a murmur? They must remem- 



24 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

ber that telephones, whatever may be said to the con- 
trary, are one of the modern aids to domesticity and 
preventives of gadding, while still keeping one not only 
in touch with a friend but within range of the voice. 
Surely there can be no woman so self-sufficient that she 
does not in silent moments yearn for a spoken word with 
one of her kind. 

When I had finished sowing my first planting of 
mignonette and growled at the prospective labour en- 
tailed by thinning out the fall- sown Shirley poppies 
(I have quite resolved to plant everything in the vege- 
table-garden seed beds and then transplant to the 
flowering beds as the easier task), Lavinia Cortright 
came up, note-book in hand, inviting herself comfortably 
to spend the day, and thoroughly inspect the hardy seed 
bed, to see what I had for exchange, as well as perfect 
her plan of starting one of her own. 

By noon the sun had made the south corner, where 
the Russian violets grow, quite warm enough to make 
lunching out-of-doors possible, and promising to protect 
Lavinia's rather thinly shod feet from the ground with 
one of the rubber mats whereon I kneel when I trans- 
plant, she consented to thus celebrate the coming of 
the season of liberty, doors open to the air and sun, 
the soul to every whisper of Heart of Nature himself, 



BOOK OF THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 25 

the steward of the plan and eternal messenger of 
God. 

"Hard is the heart that loveth naught in May!" 
Yes, so hard that it is no longer flesh and blood, for 
under the spell of renewal every grass blade has new 
beauty, every trifle becomes of importance, and the 
humble song sparrow a nightingale. 

The stars that blazed of winter nights have fallen and 
turned to dandelions in the grass; the Forsythias are 
decked in gold, a colour that is carried up and down 
the garden borders in narcissus, dwarf tulips, and pan- 
sies, peach blossoms giving a rosy tinge to the snow 
fall of cherry bloom. 

To-day there are two catbirds, Elle et Lui, and the 
first Johnny Wren is inspecting the particular row of 
cottages that top the long screen of honeysuckles back 
of the walk named by Richard Wren Street. Why is 
the song sparrow calling "Dick, Dick!" so lustily 
and scratching so testily in the leaves that have drifted 
under an old rose shrub ? The birds' bath and drink- 
ing basin is still empty ; I pour out the libation to the 
day by filling it. 

The seed bed is reached at last. It has wintered fairly 
well, and the lines of plants all show new growth. As 
I started to point out and explain, Lavinia Cortright 



26 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

began to jot down name and quantity, and then, stop- 
ping, said : " No, you must write it out as the first record 
for The Garden, You, and I. I make a motion to that 
effect." As I was about to protest, the postman brought 
some letters, one being from Mary Penrose, to whom 
Mrs. Cortright stands as aunt by courtesy. I opened 
it, and spreading it between us we began to read, so 
that afterward Lavinia declared that her motion was 
passed by default. 

"Woodridge, April 30. 
"My dear Mrs. Evan, 

"I am going into gardening in earnest this spring, 
and I want you and Aunt Lavinia to tell me things, : — 
things that you have done yourselves and succeeded or 
failed in. Especially about the failures. It is a great 
mistake for garden books and papers to insist that there 
is no such word in horticulture as fail, that every flower 
bed can be kept in full flower six months of the year, in 
addition to listing things that will bloom outdoors in 
winter in the Middle States, and give all floral measure- 
ments as if seen through a telephoto lens. It makes 
one feel the exceptional fool. It's discouraging and 
not stimulating in the least. Doesn't even nature 
meet with disaster once in a while as if by way of 



BOOK OF THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 27 

encouragement to us? And doesn't nature's garden 
have on and off seasons? So why shouldn't ours? 

"There is a quantity of Garden Goozle going about 
nowadays that is as unbelievable, and quite as bad for 
the constitution and pocket, as the guarantees of patent 
medicines. No, Garden Goozle is not my word, you must 
understand; it was invented by a clever professor of 
agriculture, whom Bart met not long ago, and we loved 
the word so much that we have adopted it. The mental 
quality of Garden Goozle seems to be compounded of 
summer squash and milkweed milk, and it would be 
quite harmless were it not for the strong catbriers grafted 
in the mass for impaling the purses of the trusting. 

"Ah, if we only lived a little nearer together, near 
enough to talk over the garden fence ! It seems cruel 
to ask you to write answers to all my questions, but after 
listing the hardy plants I want for putting the garden on 
a consistent old-time footing, I find the amount runs 
quite to the impossible three figures, aside from every- 
thing else we need, so I've decided on beginning with a 
seed bed, and I want to know before we locate the new 
asparagus bed how much ground I shall need for a 
seed bed, what and how to plant, and everything else ! 

"I like all the hardy things you have, especially those 
that are mice, lice, and water proof ! If you will send 



28 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

me ever so rough a list, I shall be grateful. Would I 
better begin at once or wait until July or August, as 
some of the catalogues suggest? 

" Bart has just come in and evidently has something 
on his mind of which he wishes to relieve himself via 
speech. 

" Your little sister of the garden, 

"Mary P." 

"She must join The Garden, You, and I, " said La- 
vinia Cortright, almost before I had finished the letter. 
"She will be entertainer in chief, for she never fails 
to be amusing!" 

"I thought there were to be but three members," 
I protested, thinking of the possible complications of a 
three-cornered correspondence. 

"Ah, well," Lavinia Cortright replied quickly, 
"make the Garden an Honorary member; it is usual 
so to rank people of importance from whom much is 
expected, and then we shall still be but three — with 
privilege of adding your husband as councillor and 
mine as librarian and custodian of deeds!" 

So I have promised to write to Mary Penrose this 
evening. 



Ill 

CONCERNING HARDY PLANTS 

THE SEED BED FOR HARDY FLOWERS 

When the Cortrights first came to Oaklands, ex- 
pecting to remain here but a few months each summer, 
their garden consisted of some borders of old-fash- 
ioned, hardy flowers, back of the house. These 
bounded a straight walk that, beginning at the porch, 
went through an arched grape arbour, divided the 
vegetable garden, and finally ended under a tree in the 
orchard at the barrier made by a high-backed green 
wooden seat, that looked as if it might have been a 
pew taken from some primitive church on its rebuilding. 

There were, at intervals, along this walk, some bushes 
of lilacs, bridal-wreath spirea, flowering almond, snow- 
ball, syringa, and scarlet flowering quince; for roses, 
Mme. Plantier, the half double Boursault, and some 
great clumps of the little cinnamon rose and Harrison's 
yellow brier, whose flat opening flowers are things of a 
day, these two varieties having the habit of travelling 

all over a garden by means of their root suckers. Here 

29 



So THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

and there were groups of tiger and lemon lilies growing 
out of the ragged turf, bunches of scarlet bee balm, or 
Oswego tea, as it is locally called, while plantain lilies, 
with deeply ribbed heart-shaped leaves, catnip, south- 
ernwood, and mats of grass pinks. Single hollyhocks 
of a few colours followed the fence line; tall phlox of 
two colours, white and a dreary dull purple, rambled 
into the grass and was scattered through the orchard, 
in company with New England asters and various golden 
rods that had crept up from the waste pasture- land be- 
low; and a straggling line of button chrysanthemums, 
yellow, white, maroon, and a sort of medicinal rhubarb- 
pink, had backed up against the woodhouse as if seeking 
shelter. Lilies- of- the- valley planted in the shade and 
consequently anaemic and scant of bells, blended with 
the blue periwinkle until their mingled foliage made a 
great shield of deep, cool green that glistened against 
its setting of faded, untrimmed grass. 

This garden, such as it was, could be truly called 
hardy, insomuch as all the care it had received for 
several years was an annual cutting of the longest 
grass. The fittest had survived, and, among herbaceous 
things, whatsoever came of seed, self-sown, had reverted 
nearly to the original type, as in the case of hollyhocks, 
phlox, and a few common annuals. The long grass, 



CONCERNING HARDY PLANTS 31 

topped by the leaves that had drifted in and been left 
undisturbed, made a better winter blanket than many 
people furnish to their hardy plants, — the word hardy 
as applied to the infinite variety of modern herbaceous 
plants as produced by selection and hybridization not 
being perfectly understood. 

While a wise selection of flowering shrubs and truly 
hardy roses will, if properly planted, pruned, and fer- 
tilized, live for many years, certain varieties even out- 
lasting more than one human generation, the modern 
hardy perennial and biennial of many species and sump- 
tuous effects must be watched and treated with almost as 
much attention as the so-called bedding-plants demand 
in order to bring about the best results. 

The common idea, fostered by inexperience, and also, 
I'm sorry to say, by what Mary Penrose dubs Garden 
Goozle, that a hardy garden once planted is a thing 
accomplished for life, is an error tending to bitter dis- 
appointment. If we would have a satisfactory garden 
of any sort, we must in our turn follow Nature, who never 
rests in her processes, never even sleeping without a 
purpose. But if fairly understood, looked squarely 
in the face, and treated intelligently, the hardy garden, 
supplemented here and there with annual flowers, is 
more than worth while and a perpetual source of joy. 



32 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

If money is not an object to the planter, she may begin 
by buying plants to stock her beds, always remem- 
bering that if these thrive, they must be thinned out or 
the clumps subdivided every few years, as in the case 
of hybrid phloxes, chrysanthemums, etc., or else dug 
up bodily and reset; for if this is not done, smaller 
flowers with poorer colours will be the result. 

The foxglove, one of the easily raised and very hardy 
plants, of majestic mien and great landscape value, 
will go on growing in one location for many years ; but 
if you watch closely, you will find that it is rarely the 
original plant that has survived, but a seedling from it 
that has sprung up unobserved under the sheltering 
leaves of its parent. The old plant grows thick at the 
juncture of root stock and leaf, the action of the frost 
furrows and splits it, water or slugs gain an entrance, 
and it disappears, the younger growth taking its place. 
Especially true is this also of hollyhocks. The lark- 
spurs have different roots and more underground vigour, 
and all tap- rooted herbs hold their own well, the dif- 
ficulty being to curb their spreading and undermining 
their border companions. 

It is conditions like these that keep the gardener 
of hardy things ever on the alert. Beds for annuals 
or florists' plants are thoroughly dug and graded each 






W '~ tf'flfll* 



[2v f * 






<>♦ ^** 






/f&! 



\ ,- * - - 



1: ! ' 11 " - ■ 



CONCERNING HARDY PLANTS 33 

spring, so that the weeds that must be combated are of 
new and comparatively shallow growth. The hardy 
bed, on the contrary, in certain places must be stirred 
with a fork only and that with the greatest care, for, if 
well- planned, plants of low growth will carpet the ground 
between tall standing things, so that in many spots the 
fingers, with a small weeding hoe only, are admissible. 
Thus a blade of grass here, some chickweed there, the 
seed ball of a composite dropping in its aerial flight, and 
lo ! presently weedlings and seedlings are wrestling 
together, and you hesitate to deal roughly with one for 
fear of injuring the constitution of the other. To go to 
the other extreme and keep the hardy garden or border 
as spick and span clean as a row of onions or carrots 
in the vegetable garden, is to do away with the informal- 
ity and a certain gracious blending of form and colour 
that is one of its greatest charms. 

Thus it comes about, with the most successful of hardy 
mixed borders, that, at the end of the third season, things 
will become a little confused and the relations between 
certain border-brothers slightly strained; the central 
flowers of the clumps of phloxes, etc., grow small, be- 
cause the newer growth of the outside circle saps their 
vitality. 

Personally, I believe in drastic measures and every 



34 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

third or fourth year, in late September, or else April, 
according to season and other contingencies, I have all 
the plants carefully removed from the beds and ranged 
in rows of a kind upon the broad central walk. Then, 
after the bed is thoroughly worked, manured, and graded, 
the plants are divided and reset, the leavings often serv- 
ing as a sort of horticultural wampum, the medium 
of exchange among neighbours with gardens, or else 
going as a freewill offering to found a garden for one 
of the "plotters" who needs encouragement. 

The limitations of the soil of my garden and surround- 
ings serve as the basis of an experience that, however, 
I have found carried out practically in the same way 
in the larger gardens of the Bluffs and in many other 
places that Evan and I have visited. So that any one 
thinking that a hardy garden, at least of herbaceous 
plants, is a thing that, once established, will, if not 
molested, go on forever, after the manner of the fern 
banks of the woods or the wild flowers of marsh and 
meadow, will be grievously disappointed. 

Of course, where hardy plants are massed, as in nurs- 
eries, horticultural gardens, or the large estates, each 
in a bed or plot of its kind, this resetting is far 
simpler, as each variety can receive the culture best 
suited to it, and there is no mixing of species. 



CONCERNING HARDY PLANTS 35 

Another common error in regard to the hardy gar- 
den, aided and abetted by Garden Goozle, is that it is 
easy or even practicable to have every bed in a bloom- 
ing and decorative condition during the whole season. 
It is perfectly possible always to have colour and fra- 
grance in some part of the garden during the entire 
season, after the manner of the natural sequence of 
bloom that passes over the land, each bed in bloom 
some of the time, but not every bed all of the time. 
Artifice and not nature alone can produce this, and ar- 
tifice is too costly a thing for the woman who is her own 
gardener, even if otherwise desirable. For it should 
appeal to every one having a grain of garden sense that, 
if the plants of May and June are to grow and bloom 
abundantly, those that come to perfection in July and 
August, if planted in their immediate vicinity, must be 
overshadowed and dwarfed. The best that can be 
done is to leave little gaps or lines between the hardy 
plants, so that gladioli, or some of the quick-growing 
and really worthy annuals, can be introduced to lend 
colour to what becomes too severely of the past. 

There is one hardy garden, not far from Boston, 
one of those where the landscape architect lingers to 
study the possibilities of the formal side of his art in 
skilful adjustment of pillar, urn, pergola, and basin, — 



36 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

this garden is never out of flower. At many seasons 
Evan and I had visited it, early and late, only to find 
it one unbroken sheet of bloom. How was it possible, 
we queried? Comes a day when the complex secret 
of the apparent simple abundance was revealed. It 
was as the foxgloves, that flanked a long alley, were de- 
cidedly waning when, quite early one morning, we 
chanced to behold a small regiment of men remove the 
plants, root and branch, and swiftly substitute for them 
immense pot-grown plants of the tall flower snapdragon 
{Antirrhinum), perfectly symmetrical in shape, with 
buds well open and showing colour. These would con- 
tinue in bloom quite through August and into September. 
So rapidly was the change made that, in a couple of hours 
at most, all traces were obliterated, and the casual 
passer-by would have been unaware that the plants had 
not grown on the spot. This sort of thing is a permissi- 
ble luxury to those who can afford and desire an exhibi- 
tion garden, but it is not watching the garden growing 
and quivering and responding to all its vicissitudes and 
escapes as does the humble owner. Hardy gardening 
of this kind is both more difficult and costly, even if more 
satisfactory, than filling a bed with a rotation of florists' 
flowers, after the custom as seen in the parks and about 
club-houses : to wit, first tulips, then pansies and daisies, 



CONCERNING HARDY PLANTS 37 

next foliage plants or geraniums, and finally, when frost 
threatens, potted plants of hardy chrysanthemums are 
brought into play. 

No, The Garden, You, and I know that hardy plants, 
native and acclimated, may be had in bloom from hepat- 
ica time until ice crowns the last button chrysanthemum 
and chance pansy, but to have every bed in continuous 
bloom all the season is not for us, any more than it is 
to be expected that every individual plant in a row should 
survive the frost upheavals and thaws of winter. 

If a garden is so small that half a dozen each of the 
ten or twelve best- known species of hardy herbs will 
suffice, they may be bought of one of the many reliable 
dealers who now offer such things; but if the place is 
large and rambling, affording nooks for hardy plants 
of many kinds and in large quantities, then a permanent 
seed bed is a positive necessity. 

This advice is especially for those who are now so , 
rapidly taking up old farmsteads, bringing light again I 
to the eyes of the window-panes that have looked out 
on the world of nature so long that they were grow- 
ing dim from human neglect. In these places, where 
land is reckoned by the acre, not by the foot, there is no 
excuse for the lack of seed beds for both hardy and 
annual flowers (though these latter belong to another 



38 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

record), in addition to space for cuttings of shrubs, 
hardy roses, and other woody things that may be thus 
rooted. 

If there is a bit of land that has been used for a vege- 
table garden and is not wholly worn out, so much the 
better. The best seed bed I have ever seen belongs to 
Jane Crandon at the Jenks-Smith place on the Bluffs. 
It was an old asparagus bed belonging to the farm, 
thoroughly well drained and fertilized, but the original 
crop had grown thin and spindling from being neg- 
lected and allowed to drop its seed. 

In the birth of this bed the wind and sun, as in all 
happy gardens, had been duly consulted, and the wind 
promised to keep well behind a thick wall of hemlocks 
that bounded it on the north and east whenever he 
was in a cruel mood. The sun, casting his rays about 
to get the points of compass, promised that he would fix 
his eye upon the bed as soon as he had bathed his face 
in mist on rising and turned the corner of the house, and 
then, after watching it until past noon, turn his back, 
so no wonder that the bed throve. 

Any well-located bit of fairly good ground can be 
made into a hardy seed bed, provided only that it is 
not where frozen water covers it in winter, or in the 
way of the wind, coming through a cut or sweeping 



CONCERNING HARDY PLANTS 39 

over the brow of a hill, for flowers are like birds in 
this respect, — they can endure cold and many other 
hardships, but they quail before the blight of wind. 

For all gardens of ordinary size a bit of ground ten 
feet by thirty feet will be sufficient. If the earth is heavy 
loam and inclined to cake or mould, add a little sifted 
sand and a thin sprinkling of either nitrate of soda or 
one of the "complete" commercial manures. Barn- 
yard manure, unless very well rotted and thoroughly 
worked under, is apt to develop fungi destructive to 
seedlings. This will be sufficient preparation if the soil 
is in average condition ; but if the earth is old and worn 
out, it must be either sub-soiled or dug and enriched 
with barnyard (not stable) manure to the depth of a 
foot, or more if yellow loam is not met below that 
depth. 

If the bed is on a slight slope, so much the better. 
Dig a shallow trench of six or eight inches around it to 
carry off the wash. An abrupt hillside is a poor place 
for such a bed, as the finer seeds will inevitably be washed 
out in the heavy rains of early summer. If the surface 
soil is lumpy or full of small stones that escape fine 
raking, it must be shovelled through a sand- screen, 
as it is impossible for the most ambitious seed to grow 
if its first attempt is met by the pressure of what would 



4 o THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

be the equivalent of a hundred- ton boulder to a 
man. 

It is to details such as these that success or failure in 
seed raising is due, and when people say, "I prefer to 
buy plants; I am very unlucky with seeds," I smile 
to myself, and the picture of something I once observed 
done by one of the so-called gardeners of my early 
married days flits before me. 

The man scraped a groove half an inch deep in hard- 
baked soil, with a pointed stick, scattered therein the 
dustlike seeds of the dwarf blue lobelia as thickly 
as if he had been sprinkling sugar on some very sour 
article, then proceeded to trample them into the earth 
with all the force of very heavy feet. Of course the 
seeds thus treated found themselves sealed in a cement 
vault, somewhat after the manner of treating victims 
of the Inquisition, the trickle of moisture that could 
possibly reach them from a careless watering only 
serving to prolong their death from suffocation. 

The woman gardener, I believe, is never so stupid 
as this; rather is she tempted to kill by kindness in 
overfertilizing and overwatering, but too lavish of seed 
in the sowing she certainly is, and I speak from the con- 
viction born of my own experience. 

When the earth is all ready for the planting, and the 



CONCERNING HARDY PLANTS 41 

sweet, moist odour rises when you open the seed papers 
with fingers almost trembling with eagerness, it seems 
second nature to be lavish. If a few seeds will produce 
a few plants, why not the more the merrier? If they 
come up too thick, they can be thinned out, you argue, 
and thick sowing is being on the safe side. But is it ? 
Quite the contrary. When the seedlings appear, you 
delay, waiting for them to gain a good start before jar- 
ring their roots by thinning. All of a sudden they 
make such strides that when you begin, you are appalled 
by the task, and after a while cease pulling the individ- 
ual plants, but recklessly attack whole "chunks" at 
once, or else give up in a despair that results in a row 
of anaemic, drawn-out starvelings that are certainly not 
to be called a success. After having tried and duly 
weighed the labour connected with both methods, I 
find it best to sow thinly and to rely on rilling gaps 
by taking a plant here and there from a crowded spot. 
For this reason, as well as that of uniformity also, it is 
always better to sow seeds of hardy or annual flowers 
in a seed bed, and then remove, when half a dozen leaves 
appear, to the permanent position in the ornamental 
part of the garden. 

With annuals, of course, there are some exceptions to 
this rule, — in the case of sweet peas, nasturtiums, 



42 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

mignonette, portulaca, poppies, and the like, where 
great quantities are massed. 

When you have prepared a hardy seed bed of the 
dimensions of ten by thirty feet, which will allow of 
thirty rows, ten feet long and a foot apart (though you 
must double the thirty feet if you intend to cultivate 
between the rows with any sort of weeding machine, 
and if you have room there should be two feet or 
even three between the rows), draw a garden line taut 
across the narrow way of the plot at the top, snap it, 
and you will have the drill for your first planting, which 
you may deepen if the seeds be large. 

Before beginning, make a list of your seeds, with the 
heights marked against each, and put the tallest at the 
top of the bed. 

"Why bother with this, when they are to be trans- 
planted as soon as they are fist up?" I hear Mary 
Penrose exclaim quickly, her head tipped to one side 
like an inquisitive bird. 

Because this seed bed, if well planned, will serve the 
double purpose of being also the "house supply bed." 
If, when the transplanting is done, the seedlings are 
taken at regular intervals, instead of all from one spot, 
those that remain, if not needed as emergency fillers, 
will bloom as they stand and be the flowers to be util- 



CONCERNING HARDY PLANTS 43 

ized by cutting for house decoration, without depriv- 
ing the garden beds of too much of their colour. At the 
commercial florists, and in many of the large private 
gardens, rows upon rows of flowers are grown on the 
vegetable- garden plan, solely for gathering for the 
house, and while those with limited labour and room 
cannot do this extensively, they can gain the same end 
by an intelligent use of their seed beds. 

Many men (and more especially many women), many 
minds, but however much tastes may differ I think 
that a list of thirty species of herbaceous perennials 
should be enough to satisfy the ambition of an amateur, 
at least in the climate of the middle and eastern United 
States. I have tried many more, and I could be satis- 
fied with a few less. Of course by buying the seeds in 
separate colours, as in the single case of pansies, one 
may use the entire bed for a single species, but the cal- 
culation of size is based upon either a ten- foot row of a 
mixture of one species, or else that amount of ground 
subdivided among several colours. 

Of the seeds for the hardy beds themselves, the entic- 
ing catalogues offer a bewildering array. The maker 
of the new garden would try them all, and thereby often 
brings on a bit of horticultural indigestion in which 
gardener and garden suffer equally, and the resulting 



44 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

plants frequently perish from pernicious anaemia. Of 
the number of plants needed, each gardener must be 
the judge; also, in spite of many warnings and direc- 
tions, each one must finally work on the lines of per- 
sonally won experience. What is acceptable to the soil 
and protected by certain shelter in my garden on one 
side of hill crest or road may not flourish in a different 
soil and exposure only a mile away. One thing is 
very certain, however, — it is time wasted to plant a 
hardy garden of herbaceous plants in shallow soil. 

In starting the hardy seed bed it is always safe to plant 
columbines, Canterbury bells, coreopsis, larkspur, 
pinks in variety, foxgloves, hollyhocks, gaillardia, the 
cheerful evergreen candy-tuft, bee balm and its cousin 
wild bergamot, forget-me-nots, evening primroses, and 
the day-flowering sundrops, Iceland and Oriental pop- 
pies, hybrid phlox, the primrose and cowslips of both 
English fields and gardens, that are quite hardy here (at 
least in the coastwise New England and Middle states), 
double feverfew, lupins, honesty, with its profusion of 
lilac and white bloom and seed vessels that glisten like 
mother-of-pearl, the tall snapdragons, decorative alike 
in garden or house, fraxinella or gas plant, with its 
spikes of odd white flowers, and pansies, always pansies, 
for the open in spring and autumn, in rich, shady nooks 




Fraxinella,— German Iris and Candy-tuft. 



CONCERNING HARDY PLANTS 45 

all summer, and even at midwinter a few tufts left in a 
sunny spot, at the bottom of a wall by the snowdrops, 
will surprise you with round, cheerful faces with the 
snow coverlet tucked quite under their chins. 

It is well to keep a tabulated list of these old-time 
perennials in the Garden Boke, so that in the feverish 
haste and excitement of the planting season a mere 
glance will be a reminder of height, colour, and time of 
bloom. I lend you mine, not as containing anything 
new or original, but simply as a suggestion, a hint of 
what one garden has found good and writ on its honour 
list. Newer things and hybrids are now endless, and 
may be tested and added, one by one, but it takes at 
least three seasons of this adorably unmonotonous 
climate of alternate drought, damp, open or cold winter, 
to prove a plant hardy and worthy a place on the honour 
roll. (See p. 376.) 

Before you plant, sit down by yourself with the pack- 
ages spread before you and examine the seeds at your 
leisure. This is the first uplifting of the veil that you 
may see into the real life of a garden, a personal knowl- 
edge of the seed that mothers the perfect plant. 

It may seem a trivial matter, but it is not so ; each 
seed, be it seemingly but a dust grain, bears its own type 
and identity. Also, from its shape, size, and the hard- 



46 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

ness or thinness of its covering, you may learn the neces- 
sities of its planting and development, for nowhere more 
than in the seed is shown the miraculous in nature and 
the forethought and economy of it all. 

The smaller the seed, the greater the yield to a flower, 
as if to guard against chances of loss. The stately fox- 
glove springs from a dust grain, and fading holds aloft 
a seed spike of prolific invention ; the lupin has stout, 
podded, countable seeds that must of necessity fall to the 
ground by force of weight. Also in fingering the seeds, 
you will know why some are slow in germinating : these 
are either hard and gritty, sandlike, like those of the 
English primrose, smooth as if coated with varnish, 
like the pansy, violet, columbine, and many others, 
or enclosed in a rigid shell like the iris-hued Japanese 
morning-glories and other ipomeas. Heart of Nature 
is never in a hurry, for him time is not. What matters 
it if a seed lies one or two years in the ground ? 

With us of seed beds and gardens, it is different. 
We wish present visible growth, and so we must be 
willing to lend aid, and first aid to such seeds is to give 
them a whiff of moist heat to soften what has become 
more hard than desirable through man's intervention. 
For in wild nature the seed is sown as soon as it ripens, 
and falls to the care of the ground before the vitality 



CONCERNING HARDY PLANTS 47 

of the parent plant has quite passed from it. That is 
why the seed of a hardy plant, self-sown at midsummer, 
grows with so much more vigour than kindred seed that 
has been lodged in a packet since the previous season. 

My way of "first aiding" these seeds is to tie them 
loosely in a wisp of fine cheese-cloth or muslin, leaving 
a length of string for a handle (as tea is sometimes pre- 
pared for the pot by those who do not like mussy tea 
leaves). Dip the bag in hot (not boiling) water, 
and leave it there at least an hour, oftentimes all night. 
In this way the seed is softened and germination awak- 
ened. I have left pansy seeds in soak for twenty-four 
hours with good results. Of course the seed should be 
planted before it dries, and rubbing it in a little earth 
(after the manner of flouring currants for cake) will 
keep the seeds from sticking either to the fingers or to 
each other. 

What a contrast it all is, our economy and nature's 
lavishness; our impatience, nature's calm assurance! 
In the garden the sower feels a responsibility, the sweat 
beads stand on the brow in the sowing. With nature 
undisturbed it may be the blind flower of the wild violet 
perfecting its moist seed under the soil, a nod of a stalk 
to the wind, a ball of fluff sailing by, or the hunger of a 
bird, and the sowing is done. 



IV 
THEIR GARDEN VACATION 

(From Mary Penrose to Barbara Campbell) 

Woodridge, May 10. 
"Dear Mrs. Evan, 

" For the past week I have been delving in the seed 
bed, and until it was an accomplished fact, that is as 
far as putting on the top sheet of finely sifted dirt over 
the seeds sleeping in rows and rounding the edges after 
the most approved methods of bed-making, praying 
the while for a speedy awakening, I had neither fingers 
for pen, ink, and paper, nor the head to properly think 
out the answer to your May-day invitation. 

" So you have heard that we are to take a long vacation 
this summer, and therefore ask us to join your driving 
and tramping trip in search of garden and sylvan ad- 
venture ; in short to become your fellow- strollers in the 
Forest of Arden, now transported to the Berkshires. 

" It was certainly a kind and gracious thought of yours 
to admit outsiders into the intimacies of such a journey, 
and on the moment we both cried, 'Yes, we will go !' 



THEIR GARDEN VACATION 49 

and then appeared but — that little word of three 
letters, and yet the condensation of whole volumes, 
that is so often the stumbling-block to enthusiasm. 

" The translation of this particular &«£ will take a quire 
of paper, much ink, and double postage on my part, and 
a deal of perusive patience on yours, so to proceed. Like 
much else that is hearable the report is partly true, inso- 
much that your father, Dr. Russell, thinks it necessary 
for Bart to take a real vacation, as he put it, 'An entire 
change in a place where time is not beaten insistently 
at the usual sixty- seconds- a-minute rate, day in and out,' 
where he shall have no train- catching or appointments 
either business or social hanging over him. At the same 
time he must not hibernate physically, but be where he 
will feel impelled to take plenty of open-air exercise, 
as a matter of course ! For you see, as a lawyer, Bart 
breathes in a great deal of bad air, and his tongue and 
pen hand get much more exercise than do his legs, while 
all the spring he has 'gone back on his vittles that 
reckless it would break your heart,' as Anastasia, our 
devoted, if outspoken, Celtic cook puts it. 

" The exact location of this desired valley of perfection, 
the ways and means of reaching it, as well as what shall 
become of the house and Infant during our absence, 
have formed a daily dialogue for the past fortnight, or 



50 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

I should say triologue, for Anastasia has decided opin- 
ions, and has turned into a brooding raven, informing 
us constantly of the disasters that have overtaken vari- 
ous residents of the place who have taken vacations, 
the head of one family having acquired typhoid in the 
Catskills, a second injured his spine at the seaside by 
diving in shallow water, while the third was mistaken 
for a moose in Canada and shot. However, her in- 
terest is comforting from the fact that she evidently 
does not wish to part with us at present. 

" It must be considered that if we take a really com- 
fortable trip of a couple of months' duration, and Bart's 
chief is willing to allow him a three months' absence, 
as it will be his first real vacation since we were married 
six years ago, it will devour the entire sum that we have 
saved for improving the farm and garden. 

" You live on the place where you were born, which 
has developed by degrees like yourselves, yet you 
probably know that rescuing, not an abandoned farm 
but the abode of ancient and decayed gentility, even 
though the house is oak-ribbed Colonial, and making it 
a tangible home for a commuter, is not a cheap bit of 
work. 

"As to the Infant — to take a human four-and-a- 
half- year-old travelling, for the best part of a summer, 



THEIR GARDEN VACATION 51 

is an imposition upon herself, her parents, and the pub- 
lic at large. To leave her with Bart's mother, whose 
forte is Scotch crossed with Pennsylvania Dutch dis- 
cipline, will probably be to find on her return that she 
has developed a quaking fear of the dark ; while, if she 
goes to my mother, bless her ! who has the beautiful 
and soothing Southern genius for doing the most com- 
fortable thing for the moment, regardless of conse- 
quences, the Infant for months after will expect to be 
sung to sleep, my hand cuddled against her cheek, until 
I develop laryngitis from continued vocal struggles 
with 'Ole Uncle Ned,' 'Down in de Cane Brake,' 
and 'De Possum and de Coon.' 

" This mental and verbal struggle was brought to an 
end yesterday by The Man from Everywhere. Do you 
remember, that was the title that we gave Ross Blake, 
the engineer, two summers ago, when you and Evan 
visited us, because he was continually turning up and al- 
ways from some new quarter? Just now he has been 
put in charge of the construction of the reservoir 
that is to do away with our beloved piece of wild- 
flower river woods in the valley below Three Brothers 
Hills. 

" As usual he turned up unexpectedly with Bartram 
Saturday afternoon and 'made camp,' as a matter of 



52 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

course. A most soothing sort of person is this same 
Man from Everywhere, and a special dispensation to any 
woman whose husband's best friend he chances to be, 
as in my case, for a man who is as well satisfied with 
crackers, cheese, and ale as with your very best com- 
pany spread, praises the daintiness of your guest cham- 
ber, but sleeps equally sound in a hammock swung in 
the Infant's attic play -room, is not to be met every day 
in this age of finnickiness. Then again he has the gift 
of saying the right thing at difficult moments, and 
meaning it too, and though a born rover, has an almost 
feminine sympathy for the little dilemmas of house- 
keeping that are so vital to us and yet are of no moment 
to the masculine mind. Yes, I do admire him im- 
mensely, and only wish I saw an opportunity of marry- 
ing him either into the family or the immediate neigh- 
bourhood, for though he is nearly forty, he is neither a 
misanthrope nor a woman hater, but rather seems to 
have set himself a difficult ideal and had limited oppor- 
tunities. Once, not long ago, I asked him why he did 
not marry. 'Because,' he answered, 'I can only 
marry a perfectly frank woman, and the few of that clan 
I have met, since there has been anything in my pocket 
to back my wish, have always been married I' 

"'I have noticed that too,' said Bart, whom I did not 



THEIR GARDEN VACATION 53 

know was listening; 'then there is nothing for us to 
do but find you a widow ! ' 

"'No, that will not do, either; I want born, not 
acquired, frankness, for that is only another term for 
expediency,' he replied with emphasis. 

" So you see this Man is not only somewhat difficult, 
but he has observed ! 

" Last night after dinner, when the men drew their 
chairs toward the fire, — for we still have one, though 
the windows are open, — and the fragrance from the 
bed of double English violets, that you sent me, mingled 
with the wood smoke, we all began to croon comfortably. 
As soon as he had settled back in the big chair, with 
closed eyes and finger tips nicely matched, we pro- 
pounded our conundrum of taking three from two and 
having four remain. 

" A brief summary of the five years we have lived 
here will make the needs of the place more clear. 

" The first year, settling ourselves in the house and 
the arrival of the Infant completely absorbed ourselves, 
income, and a good bit of savings. Repairing the home 
filled the second year. The outdoor time and money 
of the third year was eaten up by an expensive and oblit- 
erative process called 'grading,' a trap for newly 
fledged landowners. This meant taking all the kinks 



54 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

and little original attitudes out of the soil and reproving 
its occasional shoulder shrugs, so to speak, — Delsarte 
methods applied to the earth, — and you know that 
Evan actually laughed at us for doing it. 

" Even in the beginning we didn't care much for this 
grading, but it was in the plan that father Penrose had 
made for us by a landscape gardener, renowned about 
Philadelphia at the time he gave us the place as a 
'start in life,' so we felt in some way mysteriously 
bound by it. And I may as well assert right here that, 
though it is well to have a clear idea of what you mean 
to do in making a garden, or ever so small pleasure 
grounds, that every bit of labour, however trivial, 
may go toward one end and not have to be undone, a 
conventional plan unsympathetically made and blindly 
followed often becomes a cross between Fetish and Jug- 
gernaut. It has taken me exactly four years of blunder- 
ing to find that you must live your garden life, find out 
and study its peculiarities and necessities yourself, 
just as you do that of your indoor home, if success is 
to be the result ! 

"As it was, the grading began behind the lilac bushes 
inside the front fence and proceeded in fairly graceful 
sweeps, dividing each side of the level bit where the 
old garden had been, the still remaining boxwood 



THEIR GARDEN VACATION 55 

bushes and outlines of walks and beds, saving this 
from obliteration, and meeting again at the drying yard. 

" Here the proceeding stopped abruptly, as if it had 
received a shock, which it had, as at this point the family 
purse wholly collapsed with a shudder, for the next 
requirement of the plan was the turning of a long crest 
of rocky woodland, shaped like a three-humped camel, 
that bounded us on the northwest, into a series of ter- 
races, to render the assent from a somewhat trim resi- 
dential section to the pastures of the real farming coun- 
try next door less abrupt. 

"In its original state this spur of woodland had un- 
doubtedly been very beautiful, with hemlocks making a 
windbreak, and all manner of shrubs, wild herbs, and 
ferns filling in the leaf- mould pockets between the 
boulders. Now it is bare of everything except a few old 
hemlocks that sweep the pasture and the rocks, wan- 
dering cattle and excursionists from the village, dur- 
ing the 'abandoned' period of the place, having 
caused havoc among the shrubs and ferns. 

" Various estimates have been given, but $1000 seemed 
to be the average for carrying out the terrace plan 
even partially, as much blasting is involved, and 
$1000 is exactly one-fourth of the spendable part of 
Bart's yearly earnings ! 



56 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

"The flower garden also cries for proper raiment, 
for though the original lines have been preserved and 
the soil put in a satisfactory shape, in lieu of the hardy 
plants and old-time favourites that belong to such a 
place, in emergency we were reduced, last summer, to 
the quick- growing but monotonous bedding plants for 
fillers. Can you imagine anything more jarring and 
inconsistent than cannas, castor-oil beans, coleus, and 
nasturtiums in a prim setting of box? 

" Then, too, last Christmas, Bart's parents sent us a 
dear old sundial, with a very good fluted column for a 
base. The motto reads 'Never consult me at night,' 
which Bart insists is an admonition for us to keep, 
chickenlike, early hours ! Be this as it may, in order 
to live up to the dial, the beds that form its court must 
be consistently clothed — for cannas, coleus, and beans, 
read peonies, Madonna lilies, sweet-william, clove- 
pinks, and hollyhocks, which latter the seed bed I 
hope will duly furnish. 

"All these details, and more too, I poured into the 
ears of The Man from Everywhere, while Bart kept 
rather silent, but I could tell by the way his pipe 
breathed, short and quick, that he was thinking hard. 
One has to be a little careful in talking over plans and 
wishes with Bart; his spirit is generous beyond his 



THEIR GARDEN VACATION 57 

pocket-power and he is a bit sensitive. He wants to 
do so much for the Infant, the home, and me, that 
when desire outruns the purse, he seems to feel that 
the limit lies somewhere within the range of his own 
incapacity, and that bare, camel-backed knoll outlining 
the horizon, as seen from the dining-room window, 
showing the roof of the abandoned barn and hen yards, 
and the difficulty of wrestling with it, is an especially 
tender spot. 

"'If it was anything possible, I'd hump my back 
and do it, but it isn't!' he jerked, knocking his pipe 
against the chimney-side before it was half empty 
and then refilling it; 'it's either a vacation or the 
knoll — which shall it be ? 

" 'I don't hanker after leaving home, but that's what 
a complete change means, I suppose, though I confess 
I should enjoy a rest for a time from travelling to and 
fro, like a weaver's shuttle ! Mary hates to leave 
home too ; she's a regular sit-by-the-fire ! Come, 
which shall it be? This indecision makes the cure 
worse than the disease!' and Bart fingered a penny 
prior to giving it the decisive flip — ' head, a vacation ; 
tail, an attack on the knoll ! ' The penny spun, and 
then taking a queer backward leap fell into the ashes, 
where it lay buried. 



58 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

"'That reads like neither!' said Bart, sitting up 
with a start. 

"'No, both!' replied The Man from Everywhere, 
opening his eyes and gazing first at Bart and then at 
me with a quizzical expression. 

" Instantly curiosity was piqued, for compared to 
this most domestic of travelled bachelors, the Lady 
from Philadelphia was without either foresight or 
resources. 

" ' You said that your riddle was to take three from 
two and have four. My plan is very simple; just add 
three to two and you have not only four but five ! 
Take a vacation from business, but stay at home ; do 
your own garden improvements with your head and 
a horse and cart and a pair of strong hands with a 
pick and spade to help you out, for you can't, with 
impunity, turn an office man, all of a sudden, into a 
day labourer. As to hewing the knoll into terraces up 
and down again, tear up that confounded plan. Restore 
the ground on nature's lines, and you'll have a better 
windbreak for your house and garden in winter than 
the best engineer could construct, besides having a 
retreat for hot weather where you can sit in your 
bones without being observed by the neighbours!' 

" He spoke very slowly, letting the smoke wreaths 



THEIR GARDEN VACATION 59 

float before his eyes, as if in them he sought the solu- 
tion he was voicing. 

"'A terrace implies closely shorn turf and formal 
surroundings, out of keeping with this place; besides, 
young people with only a general maid and a useful 
man can't afford to be formal, — ■ if they would, the 
game isn't worth the strain.' (Did I not tell you 
that he observes?) 

" 'Let us take a look at the knoll to-morrow and 
see what has grown there and guess at what may be 
coaxed to grow, and then you can spend a couple of 
months during this summer and autumn searching the 
woods and byways for native plants for the restora- 
tion. This reservoir building is your opportunity ; you 
can rob the river valley with impunity, for the clearing 
will begin in October, consequently anything you take 
will be in the line of a rescue. So there you are — 
living in the fresh air, improving your place, and 
saving money at both ends.' 

" ' By George ! It sounds well, as far as I'm con- 
cerned !' ejaculated Bart, 'but how will such a scheme 
give Mary a vacation from housekeeping and the ever- 
lasting three meals a day? She seldom growls, but 
the last month she too has confessed to feeling tired.' 

"'I think it's a perfectly fascinating idea, but how 



60 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

will it give Bart a "complete change, away from the 
sound of the beat of time," as the doctor puts it?' I 
asked with more eagerness than I realized, for I al- 
ways dislike to be far away from home at night, and 
you see there has been whooping cough in the neigh- 
bourhood and there are also green apples to be reckoned 
with in season, even though the Infant has long ago 
passed safely through the mysteries of the second 
summer. 

" The Man from Everywhere did not answer Bart at 
all, but, turning to me with the air of a paternal sage 
and pointing an authoritative forefinger, said, some- 
what sarcastically, I thought, 'What greater change 
can an American have than leisure in which to enjoy 
his own home? For giving Time the slip, all you 
have to do is to stop the clocks and follow the sun 
and your own inclinations. As to living out of doors, 
the old open-sided hay barn on the pasture side of 
the knoll, that you have not decided whether to re- 
build or tear down, will make an excellent camp. 
Aside from the roof, it is as open as a hawk's nest. 
Don't hurry your decision; incubate the idea over 
Sunday, Madam Penrose, and I'll warrant by Monday 
you will have hatched a really tangible plan, if not a 
brood of them.' 



THEIR GARDEN VACATION 61 

" I looked at Bart, he nodded back approvingly, so 
I slipped out, first to see that the Infant was sleeping 
properly, head up, and not down under the clothes, as 
I had once found her, and then to walk to and fro 
under the budding stars for inspiration, leaving the 
pair to talk the men's talk that is so good and nourish- 
ing for a married man like Bart, no matter how much 
he cares for the Infant and me. 

" Jumbled up as the garden is, the spring twilight 
veils all deficiencies and releases persuasive odours 
from every corner, while the knoll, with its gnarled 
trees outlined against the sky, appealed to me as 
never before, a thing desirable and to be restored and 
preserved even at a cost rather than obliterated. 

" ' Oh, Mrs. Evan, I wish I could tell you how The 
Man's plan touches me and seems made for me es- 
pecially this spring. I seem fairly to have a passion 
for home and the bit of earth about and sky above it 
that is all our own. And unlike other times when I 
loved to have my friends come and visit me, and share 
and return the hospitality of neighbours, I want to be 
alone with myself and Bart, to spend long days under 
the sky and trees and have nothing come between our 
real selves and God, not even the ticking and dictation 
of a clock ! There is so much that I want to tell my 



62 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

husband just now, that cannot be put in words, and 
that he may only read by intuition. When I was 
younger and first married, I did not feel this need so 
much, but now life seems to take on so much deeper a 
meaning! Do you understand? Ah, yes, I know you 
do ! But I am wandering from the point, just as I 
yearn to wander from all the stringencies of life this 
summer. 

"Evidently seeing me, the Rural Delivery man 
whistled from his cart, instead of leaving the evening 
mail in its wren box, as usual. I went to the gate 
rather reluctantly, I was so absorbed in garden dreams, 
took the letters from the carrier, and, as the men were 
still sitting in the dark, carried them up to the lamp in 
my own sitting room, little realizing that even at that 
moment I was holding the key to the 'really tangible 
plan' in my hand. 



" The next morning. Two of the letters I received on 
Saturday night would have been of great importance 
if we were still planning to go away for a vacation, 
instead of hoping to stay at home for it. The first, 
from mother, told me that she and my brother expect 
to spend the summer in taking a journey, in which 
Alaska is to be the turning-point. She begs us to go 



THEIR GARDEN VACATION 63 

with them and offers to give me her right-hand- reliable, 
Jane McElroy, who cared for me when a baby, to stay 
here with the Infant. The second letter was from 
Maria Maxwell, a distant cousin of Bart's. She has 
also heard of our intended vacation, — indeed the 
rapidity with which the news travels and the interest 
it causes are good proofs of our stay-at-home tenden- 
cies and the general sobriety of our six years of matri- 
mony ! 

" Maria is a very bright, adaptable woman of about 
thirty-five, who teaches music in the New York public 
schools, is alone in the world, and manages to keep an 
attractive home in a mere scrap of a flat. When she 
comes to visit us, we like her as well the last day of her 
stay as the first, which fact speaks volumes for her 
character ! Though forced by circumstances to live 
in town, she has a deep love for the country, and wishes, 
if we intend to leave the house open, to come and care 
for it in our absence, even offering to cook for herself 
if we do not care to have the expense of a maid, say- 
ing, 'to cook a real meal, with a real fire instead of 
gas, will be a great and refreshing change for me, so 
you need feel under no obligation whatever ! ' 

" Thinking of the pity of wasting such tempting offers 
as these, I went to church with my body only, my 



64 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

mind staying outside under a horse-chestnut tree, and 
instead of listening as I should, I looked sidewise out 
of the window at my double in the shade and won- 
dered if, after all, the stay-at-home vacation was 
not a wild scheme. There being a Puritan streak in 
me, via my father, I sometimes question the right of 
what I wish to do simply because I like to do it. 

" At dinner I was so grumpy, answering in mono- 
syllables, that sensitive Bart looked anxious, and as 
if he thought I was disappointed at the possible turn 
of affairs, but The Man from Everywhere laughed, say- 
ing, 'Let her alone; she is not through incubating the 
plan, and you know the best of setting hens merely 
cluck and growl when disturbed.' 

" Immediately after dinner Bart and The Man went 
for a walk up the river valley, and I, going to the living 
room, seated myself by the window, where I could 
watch the Infant playing on the gravel outside, it 
being the afternoon out of both the general maid 
Anastasia and Barney the man, between whom I 
suspect matrimonial intentions. 

"The singing of the birds, the hum of bees in the 
opening lilacs, and the garden fragrance blending with 
the Infant's prattle, as she babbled to her dolls, floated 
through the open door and made me drowsy, and I 



THEIR GARDEN VACATION 65 

turned from the light toward the now empty fire- 
place. 

" A snap ! and the air seemed suddenly exhilarating ! 
Was it an electric spark from the telephone? No, 
simply the clarifying of the thoughts that had been 
puzzling me. 

" Maria Maxwell shall come during our vacations, — 
at that moment I decided to separate the time into 
several periods, — she shall take entire charge of all 
within doors. 

" Bart and I will divide off a portion of the old hay- 
barn with screens, and camp out there (unless in case 
of very bad thunder or one of the cold July storms that 
we sometimes have). Anastasia shall serve us a very 
simple hot dinner at noon in the summer kitchen, and 
keep a supply of cooked food in the pantry, from 
which we can arrange our breakfasts and suppers in 
the opposite side of the barn from our sleeping place, 
and there we can have a table, chairs, and a little oil 
stove for making tea and coffee. 

" Maria, besides attending to domestic details, must 
also inspect the mail and only show us letters when 
absolutely necessary, as well as to say 'not at home,' 
with the impenetrable New York butler manner to 
every one who calls. 



66 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

" Thus Bart and I will be equally free without the 
rending of heart strings — free to love and enjoy home 
from without, for it is really strange when one comes 
to think of it, we learn of the outside world by looking 
out the windows, but we so seldom have time to stand 
in another view-point and look in. Thus it occurred 
to me, instead of taking one long vacation, we can 
break the time into three or four in order to follow 
the garden seasons and the work they suggest. A bit 
at the end of May for both planning and locating 
the spring wild flowers before they have wholly shed 
their petals, and so on through the season, ending in 
October by the transplanting of trees and shrubs that 
we have marked and in setting out the hardy roses, 
for which we shall have made a garden according to 
the plan that Aunt Lavinia says is to be among the 
early Garden, You, and I records. 

" May 15. Maria Maxwell has joyfully agreed to 
come the twenty-first, having obtained a substitute for 
her final week of teaching, as well as rented her 'par- 
lor car,' as she calls her flat, to a couple of students 
who come from the South for change of air and to 
attend summer school at Columbia College. It seems 
that many people look upon New York as a summer 
watering place. Strange that a difference in climate 
can be merely a matter of point of view. 



THEIR GARDEN VACATION 67 

" Now that we have decided to camp out at home, 
we are beginning to realize the positive economy of the 
arrangement, for as we are not going among people, — 
neither are they coming to us, — we shall need no new 
clothes ! 

" We, a pair of natural spendthrifts, are actually 
turning miserly for the garden's sake. 

" Last night Bart went to the attic with a lantern 
and dragged from obscurity two frightful misfit suits 
of the first bicycle cuff-on-the-pants period, that were 
ripening in the camphor chest for future missionary 
purposes, announcing that these, together with some 
flannel shirts, would be his summer outfit, while this 
morning I went into town and did battle at a sale of 
substantial, dollar shirt-waists, and turning my back 
upon all the fascinations of little girls' frills and fur- 
belows, bought stout gingham for aprons and overalls, 
into which I shall presently pop the Infant, and thus 
save both stitches and laundry work. 

" Mother has sent a note expressing her pleasure in 
our plan and enclosing a cheque for $50, suggesting 
that it should be put into a birthday rose bed — my 
birthday is in two days — in miniature like the old 
garden at her home on the north Virginia border. I'm 
sending you the list of such roses as she remembered 



68 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

that were in it, but I'm sure many, like Gloire de 
Dijon, would be winter killed here. Will you revise 
the list for me? 

" Bart has arranged to shut off the back hall and 
stairs, so that when we wish, we can get to our indoor 
bedroom and bath at any hour without going through 
the house or disturbing its routine. 

" Anastasia has been heard to express doubts as to 
our entire sanity confidentially to Barney, on his re- 
turn from the removal of two cots from the attic to 
the part of the barn enclosed by some old piazza 
screens, thereby publicly declaring our intention of 
sleeping out in all seasonable weather. 

" May 20. The Blakes, next door below, are going 
to Europe, and have offered us their comfortable family 
horse, the buggy, and a light-work wagon, if we will 
feed, shoe, pet, and otherwise care for him (his name, 
it seems, is Romeo). Could anything be more in 
keeping with both our desires and needs? 

" To-day, half as a joke, I've sent out P. P. C. cards 
to all our formal friends in the county. Bart frowns, 
saying that they may be taken seriously and produce 
like results ! 

" May 22. Maria has arrived, taken possession of the 
market-book, housekeeping box, and had a satisfac- 
tory conference with Anastasia. 



THEIR GARDEN VACATION 69 

" Hurrah for Liberty and outdoors ! It begins to- 
morrow. You may label it Their Garden Vacation, and 
admit it to the records of The Garden, You, and I, 
at your own risk and peril; but as you say that if you 
are to boil down the practical part of your garden- 
boke experiences for the benefit of Aunt Lavinia and 
me and I must send you my summer doings, I shall 
take this way of accomplishing it, at intervals, the 
only regular task, if gossiping to you can be so called, 
that I shall set myself this summer. 

" A new moon to-night. Will it prove a second 
honeymoon, think you, or end in a total eclipse of our 
venture ? I'm poppy sleepy ! 

" May 23. 10 a.m. (A postal.) Starting on vaca- 
tion ; stopped bedroom clock and put away watches 
last night, and so overslept. It seems quite easy to 
get away from Time ! Please tell me what annuals 
I can plant as late in the season as this, while we are 
locating the rose bed. 

" Mary Penrose." 



V 

ANNUALS — WORTHY AND UNWORTHY 

THE MIDSUMMER GARDEN 

Oakland's, May 25. A garden vacation! Fifty dol- 
lars to spend for roses ! What annuals may be planted 
now to tide you easily over the summer? Really, Mary 
Penrose, the rush of your astonishing letter completely 
took away my breath, and while I was recovering 
it by pacing up and down the wild walk, and trying 
to decide whether I should answer your questions first, 
and if I did which one, or ask you others instead, 
Scotch fashion, about your unique summer plans, 
Evan came home a train earlier than usual, with a 
pair of horticultural problems for which he needed 
an immediate solution. 

Last evening, in the working out of these schemes, 
we found that we were really travelling on lines parallel 
with your needs, and so in due course you shall have 
Evan's prescription and design for A Simple Rose 
Garden (if it isn't simple enough, you can begin with 
half, as the proportions will be the same), while I now 

70 



ANNUALS — WORTHY AND UNWORTHY 71 

send you my plans for an inexpensive midsummer 
garden, which will be useful to you only as a part of 
the whole chain, but for which Evan has a separate 
need. 

Over at East Meadow, a suburb of Bridgeton that 
lies toward the shore and is therefore attractive to 
summer people, a friend of Evan's has put up a dozen 
tasteful, but inexpensive, Colonial cottages, and Evan 
has planned the grounds that surround them, about an 
acre being allotted to each house, for lawn and garden 
of summer vegetables, though no arbitrary boundaries 
separate the plots. The houses are intended for 
people of refined taste and moderate means who, only 
being able to leave town during the school vacation, 
from middle June to late September, yet desire to 
have a bit of garden to tend and to have flowers about 
them other than the decorative but limited piazza 
boxes or row of geraniums around the porch. 

The vegetable gardens consist of four squares, 
conveniently intersected by paths, these squares to be 
edged by annuals or bulbs of rapid growth, things that, 
planted in May, will begin to be interesting when the 
tenants come a month later. 

But here am I, on the verge of rushing into another 
theme, without having expressed our disappointment 



72 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

that you cannot bear us company this summer, yet I 
must say that the edge of regret is somewhat dulled 
by my interest in the progress and result of your garden 
vacation, which to us at least is a perfectly unique idea, 
and quite worthy of the inventive genius of The Man 
from Everywhere. 

Plainly do I see by the scope of this same letter of 
yours that the records of The Garden, You, and I, 
instead of being a confection of undistinguishable in- 
gredients blended by a chef of artistic soul, will be a 
home-made strawberry shortcake, for which I am to 
furnish the necessary but uninspired crust, while you 
will supply the filling of fragrant berries. 

With the beginning of your vacation begin my ques- 
tions domestic that threaten to overbalance your ques- 
tions horticultural. If the Infant should wail at night, 
do you expect to stay quietly out "in camp" and not 
steal on tiptoe to the house, and at least peep in at the 
window? Also, you have put a match-making thought 
in a head swept clean of all such clinging cobwebs since 
Sukey Crandon married Carthy Latham and, turn- 
ing their backs on his ranch experiment, they decided to 
settle near the Bradfords at the Ridge, where presently 
there will be another garden growing. If you have no 
one either in the family or neighbourhood likely to 



ANNUALS — WORTHY AND UNWORTHY 73 

attract The Man from Everywhere, why may we not 
have him ? Jane Crandon is quite unexpectedly bright, 
as frank as society allows, this being one of his require- 
ments, besides having grown very pretty since she has 
virtually become daughter to Mrs. Jenks-Smith and had 
sufficient material in her gowns to allow her chest to 
develop. 

But more of this later; to return to the annuals, I 
understand that you have had your hardy beds prepared 
and that you want something to brighten them, as 
summer tenants, until early autumn, when the perma- 
nent residents may be transplanted from the hardy 
seed bed. 

Annuals make a text fit for a very long sermon. 
Verily there are many kinds, and the topic forms easily 
about a preachment, for they may be divided summarily 
into two classes, the worthy and the unworthy, though the 
worth or lack of it in annuals, as with most of us humans, 
is a matter of climate, food, and environment, rather than 
inherent original sin. The truth is, nature, though 
eternally patient and good-natured, will not be hurried 
beyond a certain point, and the life of a flower that is 
born under the light cloud shelter of English skies, fed 
by nourishing mist through long days that have enough 
sunlight to stimulate and not scorch, has a different 



74 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

consummation than with us, where the climate of ex- 
tremes makes the perfection of flowers most uncertain, 
at least in the months of July and August when the 
immature bud of one day is the open, but often imper- 
fect, flower of the next. As no one may change climatic 
conditions, the only thing to be done is to give to this 
class of flowers of the summer garden room for indi- 
vidual development, all the air they need to breathe 
both below ground, by frequent stirring of the soil, and 
above, by avoidance of over-crowding, and then select 
only those varieties that are really worth while. 

This qualification can best be settled by pausing and 
asking three questions, when confronting the alluring 
portrait of an above-the-average specimen of annual in 
a catalogue, for Garden Goozle applies not only to 
the literature of the subject, but to the pictures as well, 
and a measurement of, for instance, a flower stalk of 
Drummond phlox, taken from a specimen pot-grown 
plant, raised at least partly under glass, is sure to cause 
disappointment when the average border plant is 
compared with it. 

First — is the species of a colour and length of flower- 
ing season to be used in jungle-like masses for summer 
colour? Second — has it fragrance or decorative 
quality for house decoration ? Thirdly, has it the back- 



ANNUALS— WORTHY AND UNWORTHY 75 

bone to stand alone or will the plant flop and flatten 
shapelessly at the first hard shower and so render an 
array of conspicuous stakes necessary ? Stakes, next to 
unsightly insecticides and malodorous fertilizers, are the 
bane of gardening, but that subject is big enough for a 
separate chronicle. 

By ability to stand alone, I do not mean is every 
branchlet stiff as if galvanized, like a balsam, for this is 
by no means pretty, but is the plant so constructed that 
it can languish gracefully, petunia fashion, and not fall 
over stark and prone like an uprooted castor bean. 
Hybridization, like physical culture in the human, 
has evidently infused grace in the plant races, for 
many things that in my youth seemed the embodi- 
ment of stiffness, like the gladiolus, have developed 
suppleness, and instead of the stiff bayonet spike of 
florets, this useful and indefatigable bulb, if left to 
itself and not bound to a stake like a martyr, now 
produces flower sprays that start out at right angles, 
curve, and almost droop, with striking, orchid-like effect. 

For making patches of colour, without paying special 
heed to the size of flower or development of individual 
plants, annuals may be sown thinly broadcast, raked in 
lightly, and, if the beds or borders are not too wide for 
reaching, thinned out as soon as four or five leaves 



76 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

appear. Portulaca, sweet alyssum, Shirley poppies, 
and the annual gaillardias belong to this class, as well as 
single petunias of the inexpensive varieties used to 
edge shrubberies, and dwarf nasturtiums. 

Sweet peas, of course, are to be sown early and deep, 
where they are to stand half an inch apart, like garden 
peas, and then thinned out so that there is not less than 
an inch between (two is better, but it is usually heart- 
breaking to pull up so many sturdy pealets) and reen- 
forced by brush or wire trellising. Otherwise I plant 
the really worthy, or what might be called major annuals, 
in a seed bed much like that used for the hardy plants, 
at intervals during the month of May, according to 
the earliness of the season, and the time they are wanted 
to bloom. Later, I transplant them to their summer 
resting places, leaving those that are not needed, for 
it is difficult to calculate too closely without scrimping, 
in the seed bed, to cut for house decoration, as with the 
perennials. Of course if annuals are desired for very 
early flowering, many species may be started in a hotbed 
and taken from thence to the borders. Biennials that 
it is desired shall flower the first season are best hurried 
in this way, yet for the gardenerless garden of a woman 
this makes o'er muckle work. The occasional help of 
the "general useful" is not very efficient when it 



ANNUALS— WORTHY AND UNWORTHY 77 

comes to tending hotbeds, giving the exact quantity 
of water necessary to quench the thirst of seedlings 
without producing dropsy, and the consequent " damping 
off " which, when it suddenly appears, seems as intan- 
gible and makes one feel as helpless as trying to check a 
backing horse by helpless force of bit. A frame for 
Margaret carnations, early asters, and experiments in 
seedling Dahlias and chrysanthemums will be quite 
enough. 

The woman who lives all the year in the country 
can so manage that her spring bulbs and hardy borders, 
together with the roses, last well into July. After this 
the annuals must be depended upon for ground colour, 
and to supplement the phloxes, gladioli, Dahlias, and 
the like. By the raising of these seeds in hotbeds they 
are apt to reach their high tide of bloom during the 
most intense heat of August, when they quickly mature 
and dry away; while, on the other hand, if they are 
reared in an open-air seed bed, they are not only 
stronger but they last longer, owing to more deliberate 
growth. Asters sown out-of-doors in May bloom well 
into October, when the forced plants barely outlast 
August. 

Of many annuals it is writ in the catalogues, "sow 
at intervals of two weeks or a month for succession." 



78 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

This sounds very plausible, for are not vegetables so 
dealt with, the green string-beans in our garden being 
always sown every two weeks from early April until 
September first? Yes, but to vegetables is usually 
given fresher and deeper soil for the crop succession 
than falls to flower seeds, and in addition the seeds are 
of a more rugged quality. 

My garden does not take kindly to this successive 
sowing, and I have gradually learned to control 
the flower-bearing period by difference in location. 
Spring, and in our latitude May, is the time of universal 
seed vitality, and seeds germinating then seem to possess 
the maximum of strength; in June this is lessened, 
while a July- sown seed of a common plant, such as a 
nasturtium or zinnia, seems to be impressed by the late- 
ness of the season and often flowers when but a few 
inches high, the whole plant having a weazened, preco- 
cious look, akin to the progeny of people, or higher 
animals, who are either born out of due season or of 
elderly parents. On the other hand, the plant re- 
tarded in its growth by a less stimulating location, 
when it blooms, is quite as perfect and of equal quality 
with its seed-bed fellows who were transplanted at once 
into full sunlight. 

Take, for example, mignonette, which in the larger 



ANNUALS — WORTHY AND UNWORTHY 79 

gardens is always treated by successive sowings. A 
row sown early in April, in a sunny spot in the open gar- 
den and thinned out, will flower profusely before very 
hot weather, bloom itself out, and then leave room for 
some late, flowering biennial. That sown in the 
regular seed bed early in May may be transplanted (for 
this is the way by which large trusses of bloom may be 
obtained) early in June into three locations, using it as 
a border for taller plants, except in the bed of sweet 
odours, where it may be set in bunches of a dozen 
plants, for in this bed individuality may be allowed to 
blend in a universal mass of fragrance. 

In order to judge accurately of the exact capabilities 
for shade or sunlight of the different portions of a garden, 
one must live with it, follow the shadows traced by the 
tree fingers on the ground the year through, and know 
its moods as the expressions that pass over a familiar 
face. For you must not transplant any of these annuals, 
that only live to see their sun father for one brief sea- 
son, into the shade of any tree or overhanging roof, 
but at most in the travelling umbra of a distant object, 
such as a tall spruce, the northeastern side of a hedge, or 
such like. 

In my garden one planting of mignonette in full 
sun goes in front of the March-planted sweet peas ; of 



80 THE GARDEN, YOU, AXD I 

the two transplantings from trie seed, one goes on the 
southwest side of the rose arbour and the other on the 
upper or northeast side, where it blooms until it is 
literally turned into green ice where it stands. 

This manipulation of annuals belongs to the realm 
of the permanent resident; the summer cottager must 
be content to either accept the conditions of the garden 
as arranged by his landlord, or in a brief visit or two made 
before taking possession, do his own sowing where the 
plants are to stand. In this case let him choose his 
varieties carefully and spare his hand in thickness of 
sowing, and he may have as many flowers for his table 
and as happy an experience with the summer garden, 
even though it is brief, as his wealthy neighbour who 
spends many dollars for bedding plants and foliage 
effects that may be neither smelled, gathered nor famil- 
iarized. 

Among all the numerous birds that flit through 
the trees as visitors, or else stay with us and nest in 
secluded places, how comparatively few do we really 
depend upon for the aerial colour and the song that 
opens a glimpse of Eden to our eager eyes and ears 
each year, for our eternal solace and encouragement? 
There are some, like the wood thrush, song- sparrow, 
oriole, robin, barn-swallow, catbird, and wren, without 



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ANNUALS — WORTHY AND UNWORTHY 81 

which June would not be June, but an imperfect 
harmony lacking the dominant note. 

Down close to the earth, yes, in the earth, the same 
obtains. Upon how few of all the species of annuals 
listed does the real success of the summer garden rest ? 
This is more and more apparent each year, when the 
fittest are still further developed by hybridization for 
survival and the indifferent species drop out of sight. 

We often think erroneously of the beauty of old-time 
gardens. This beauty was largely that of consistency 
of form with the architecture of the dwelling and sim- 
plicity, rather than the variety, of flowers grown. 
Maeterlinck brings this before us with forcible charm 
in his essay on Old- Fashioned Flowers, and even now 
Martin Cortright is making a little biography of the 
flowers of our forefathers, as a birthday surprise for 
Lavinia. These flowers depended more upon individ- 
uality and association than upon their great variety. 

First among the worthy annuals come sweet peas, 
mignonette, nasturtiums, and asters, each one of the 
four having two out of the three necessary qualifications, 
and the sweet pea all of them, — fragrance and decora- 
tive value for both garden and house. To be sure, the 
sweet pea, though an annual, must be planted before 
May if a satisfactory, well- grown hedge with flowers 



82 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

held on long stems well above the foliage is to be expected, 
and in certain warm, well-drained soils it is practicable 
to sow seed the autumn before. This puts the sweet 
pea a little out of the running for the hirer of a summer 
cottage, unless he can have access to the place early 
in the season, but sown thinly and once fairly rooted 
and kept free from dead flowers and pods, the vines 
will go on yielding quite through September, though on 
the coming of hot weather the flower stems shorten. 

I often plant seeds of the climbing nasturtium in the 
row with the sweet peas at a distance of one seed to the 
fist, the planting not being done until late May. The 
peas mature first, and after the best of their season has 
passed they are supplanted by the nasturtiums, which 
cover the dry vines and festoon the supporting brush 
with gorgeous colour in early autumn, keeping in the 
same colour scheme with salvia, sunflowers, gaillardias, 
and tritomas. This is excellent where space is of 
account, and also where more sweet peas are planted 
for their early yield than can be kept in good shape the 
whole season. Centaurea or cornflower, the bachelor's 
button or ragged sailor of old gardens, is in the front rank 
of the worthies. The flowers have almost the keeping 
qualities of everlastings, and are of easy culture, while 
the sweet sultan, also of this family, adds fragrance to 



ANNUALS — WORTHY AND UNWORTHY 83 

its other qualities. The blue cornflower is best sown 
in a long border or bed of unconventional shape, and 
may be treated like a biennial, one sowing being made in 
September so that the seedlings will make sturdy tufts 
before cold weather. These, if lightly covered with 
salt hay or rough litter (not leaves), will bloom in May 
and June, and if then replaced by a second sowing, 
flowers may be had from September first until freezing 
weather, so hardy is this true, blue Kaiser-blumen. 

All the poppies are worthy, from the lovely Shirley, 
with its butterfly- winged petals, to the Eschscholtzia, 
the state flower of California. 

One thing to be remembered about poppies is not 
to rely greatly upon their durability and make the 
mistake of expecting them to fill too conspicuous a 
place, or keep long in the marching line of the garden 
pageant. They have a disappointing way, especially 
the great, long-stemmed double varieties, of suddenly 
turning to impossible party-coloured mush after a bit 
of damp weather that is most discouraging. Treated 
as mere garden episodes and massed here and there 
where a sudden disappearance will not leave a gap, 
they will yield a feast of unsurpassed colour. 

To me the Shirley is the only really satisfactory annual 
poppy, and I sow it in autumn and cover it after the 



84 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

fashion of the cornflower, as it will survive anything but 
an open, rainy winter, and in the resulting display that 
lasts the whole month of June it rivals the roses in 
everything but perfume. 

Godetia is a good flower for half- shady places that it 
is difficult to fill, and rings the colour change from white 
through pink to crimson and carmine. Marigolds 
hold their own for garden colour, but not for gathering 
or bringing near the nose, and zinnias meet them on the 
same plane. 

The morning-glory tribe of ipomcEa is both useful 
and decorative for rapid-growing screens, but heed 
should be taken that the common varieties be not 
allowed to scatter their seeds at random, or the next 
season, before you know it, every plant in the garden 
will be held tight in their insinuating grasp. Especially 
beautiful are the new Imperial Japanese morning glories 
that are exquisitely margined and fringed, and of the 
size and pattern of rare glass wine cups. Petunias, if 
judiciously used, and of good colour, belong in the second 
grade of the first rank. They have their uses, but the 
family has a morbid tendency to run to sad, half- 
mourning hues, and I have put a black mark against 
it as far as my own garden is concerned. 

Drummond phlox deserves especial mention, for so 



ANNUALS— WORTHY AND UNWORTHY 85 

wide a colour range has it, and so easy is its growth (if 
only you give it plenty of water and elbow room, and 
remember that a crowded Drummond phlox is an 
unhappy plant of short life), that a very tasteful group of 
beds could be made of this flower alone by a careful 
selection of colours, while by constant cutting for the 
house the length of the blooming season is prolonged. 

The dwarf salvias, too, grow readily from seed, and 
balsams, if one has room, line up finely along straight 
walks, the firm blossoms of the camelia-flowered variety, 
with their delicate rosettes of pink, salmon, and laven- 
der, also serving to make novel table decorations when 
arranged in many ways with leaves of the laurel, 
English ivy, or fern fronds. 

Portulaca, though cousin to the objectionable 
"pusley," is most useful where mere colour is wanted 
to cover the ground in beds that have held early tulips 
or other spring bulbs, as well as for covering dry, sandy 
spots where little else will grow. It should not be 
planted until really warm weather, and therefore may be 
scattered between the rows of narcissi and late tulips 
when their tops are cut off, and by the time they are 
quite withered and done away with, the cheerful por- 
tulaca, feeding upon the hottest sunbeams, will begin 
to cover the ground, a pleasure to the eye as well as a 



86 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

decorative screen to the bulbs beneath, sucking the fierc- 
est sun rays before they penetrate. 

Chief among the low-growing worthies comes the ver- 
bena, good for bedding, good for cutting, and in some 
of the mammoth varieties subtly fragrant. Verbenas 
may be raised to advantage in a hotbed, but if the seed be 
soaked overnight in warm water, it will germinate freely 
out of doors in May and be a mass of bloom from July 
until late October. For beds grouped around a sun- 
dial or any other garden centre, the verbena has no peer ; 
its trailing habit gives it grace, the flowers are borne 
erect, yet it requires no staking and it is easily controlled 
by pinching or pinning to the soil with stout hair- 
pins. 

One little fragrant flower, fraught with meaning and 
remembrance, belongs to the annuals, though its family 
is much better known among the half-hardy perennials 
that require winter protection here. This is the 
gold and brown annual wall- flower, slender sister of 
die gelbe violet, and having that same subtle violet 
odour in perfect degree. It cannot be called a decora- 
tive plant, but it should have plenty of room given it in 
the bed of sweet odours and be used as a border on the 
sunny side of wall or fence, where, protected from the 
wind and absorbing every ray of autumn sunlight, it 



ANNUALS — WORTHY AND UNWORTHY 87 

will often give you at least a buttonhole bouquet on 
Christmas morning. 

The cosmos is counted by catalogues and culturists 
one of the most worthy of the newer annuals, and so 
it is when it takes heed to its ways and behaves its 
best, but otherwise it has all the terrible uncertainty 
of action common to human and garden parvenues. 
From the very beginning of its career it is a conspicu- 
ous person, demanding room and abundance of food. 
Thinking that its failure to bloom until frost threatened 
was because I had sown the seed out of doors in May, 
I gave it a front room in my very best hotbed early in 
March, where, long before the other occupants of the 
place were big enough to be transplanted, Mrs. Cos- 
mos and family pushed their heads against the sash 
and insisted upon seeing the world. Once in the 
garden, they throve mightily, and early in July, at a 
time when I had more flowers than I needed, the 
entire row threatened to bloom. After two weeks of 
coquettish showing of colour here and there, up and 
down the line, they concluded that midsummer sun did 
not agree with any of the shades of pink, carmine, or 
crimson of which their clothes were fashioned, and as 
for white, the memory of recent acres of field daisies 
made it too common, so they changed their minds 



88 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

and proceeded to grow steadily for two months. 
When they were pinched in on top, they simply 
expanded sidewise; ordinary and inconspicuous stak- 
ing failed to restrain them, and they even pulled 
away at different angles from poles of silver birch with 
stout rope between, like a festive company of bacchantes 
eluding the embraces of the police. A heavy wind 
storm in late September snapped and twisted their 
hollow trunks and branches. Were they discouraged? 
Not a particle; they simply rested comfortably upon 
whatever they had chanced to fall and grew again from 
this new basis. Meanwhile the plants in front of them 
and on the opposite side of the way began to feel dis- 
couraged, and a fine lot of asters, now within the shadow, 
were attacked by facial paralysis and developed their 
blossoms only on one side. 

The middle of October, the week before the coming 
of Black Frost, the garden executioner, the cosmos, 
now heavy with buds, settled down to bloom. Two 
large jars were filled with them, after much difficulty 
in the gathering, and then the axe fell. Sometimes, of 
course, they behave quite differently, and those who can 
spare ground for a great hedge backed by wall or fence 
and supported in front by pea brush deftly insinuated 
betwixt and between ground and plants, so that it 



ANNUALS — WORTHY AND UNWORTHY 89 

restrains, but is at the same time invisible, may feast 
their eyes upon a spectacle of billows of white and 
pink that, at a little distance, are reminiscent of the 
orchards of May. 

But if you, Mary Penrose, are leaning toward cosmos 
and reading in the seed catalogue of their size and won- 
derful dawn-like tints, remember that the best of highly 
hybridized things revert unexpectedly to the commonest 
type, and somewhere in this family of lofty Mexicans 
there must have been a totally irresponsible wayside 
weed. Then turn backward toward the front of the 
catalogue, find the letter A, and buy, in place of cosmos, 
aster seeds of every variety and colour that your pocket 
will allow. 

Of course the black golden-rod beetle may try to 
dwell among the aster flowers, and the aphis that are 
nursery maids to the ants infest their roots ; you must 
pick off the one and dig sulphur and unslaked lime 
deeply into the soil to discourage the other, but what- 
ever labour you spend will not be lost. 

Other annuals there are, and their name is legion, that 
are pretty enough, perhaps, and well adapted to special 
purposes, like the decorative and curious tassel flower, 
cockscombs, gourds, four o'clocks, etc., and the great 
tribe of "everlastings" for those people, if such there 



9 o THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

be, who still prefer dried things for winter bouquets, 
when an ivy- wreathed window filled with a succession of 
bulbs, ferns, or oxalis is so easily achieved ! It is too 
harsh, perhaps, to call these minor annuals unworthy, 
but as they are unimportant and increase the labour 
rather than add to the pleasure, they are really un- 
worthy of admission to the woman's garden where 
there is only time and room for the best results. 

But here I am rambling at large instead of plainly 
answering your question, "What annuals can we plant 
as late as this (May 25) while we are locating the rose 
bed ? " You may plant any or all of them up to the first 
of June, the success of course depending upon a long 
autumn and late frosts. No, not quite all ; the tall-grow- 
ing sweet peas should be in the ground not later than 
May 1 in this south New England latitude, though in 
the northern states and Canada they are planted in 
June as a matter of course. Blanche Ferry, of the 
brilliant pink- and- white complexion, however, will do 
very nicely in the light of a labour-saving afterthought, 
as, only reaching a foot and a half high, little, if any, 
brush is needed. 

We found your rose list replete with charming 
varieties, but most of them too delicate for positive suc- 
cess hereabouts. I'm sending you presently the list for 




Asters well Massed. 



ANNUALS — WORTHY AND UNWORTHY 91 

a fifty-dollar rose garden, which it seems is much in 
demand, so that I've adapted my own experience to the 
simple plan that Evan drew to enlighten amateur rose 
lovers and turn them from coveting their wealthy 
neighbours' goods to spending their energy in pro- 
ducing covetable roses of their own ! 

By the way, I send you my own particular list of 
Worthy Annuals to match the hardy plants and keep 
heights and colours easily before you until your own 
Garden Book is formulated and we can compare 
notes. (See page 387.) 

You forgot to tell me whether you have decided to 
keep hens or not ! I know that the matter has been 
discussed every spring since you have lived at Woodridge. 
If you are planning a hennery, I shall not encourage the 
rosary, for the days of a commuter's wife are not long 
enough for both without encountering nervous prostra- 
tion on the immediate premises. 

Some problems are ably solved by cooperation. As 
I am a devotee of the ornamental and comfortable, 
Martha Saunders nee Corkle runs a cooperative hen- 
yard in our north pasture for the benefit of the Cort- 
rights and ourselves to our mutual joy ! 



VI 
THEIR FORTUNATE ESCAPE 

CONCERNING EVERGREENS AND HENS 
(Mary Penrose to Barbara Campbell) 

June 5. I have not dipped pen in ink for an entire 
week, which has been one of stirring events, for not only 
have we wholly emerged from indoor life, but we have 
had a hair-breadth escape from something that not only 
threatened to mar the present summer, but to cast so 
heavy a shadow over the garden that no self-respecting 
flowers could nourish even under the thought of it. 
You cannot possibly guess with what we were threat- 
ened, but I am running ahead of myself. 

The day that we began it — the vacation — by stop- 
ping the clocks, we overslept until nine o'clock. When 
we came downstairs, the house was in a condition of 
cheerful good order unknown to that hour of the day. 

There is such a temperamental difference in this 
mere setting things to rights. It can be done so that 
every chair has a stiffly repellent look, and the conspicu- 
ous absence of dust makes one painfully conscious that 

92 



THEIR FORTUNATE ESCAPE 93 

it has not always been thus, while the fingers inad- 
vertently stray over one's attire, plucking a shred here 
and a thread there. Even flowers can be arranged in a 
vase so as to look thoroughly and reproachfully uncom- 
fortable, and all the grace and meaning crushed out of 
them. But Maria Maxwell has the touch gracious that 
makes even a plainly furnished room hold out detaining 
hands as you go through, and the flowers on the greeting 
table in the hall (yes, Lavinia Cortright taught me that 
little fancy of yours during her first visit), though 
much the same as I had been gathering for a week 
past, wore an air of novelty ! 

For a moment we stood at the foot of the stairs look- 
ing about and getting our bearings, as guests in an 
unfamiliar place rather than householders. It flitted 
through my body that I was hungry, and one of the 
"must be's" of the vacation country was that we were 
to forage for breakfast. At the same time Bart saun- 
tered unconsciously toward the mail- box under the hat- 
rack and then, suddenly putting his hands behind him, 
turned to me with a quizzical expression, saying: "Let- 
ters are forbidden, I know, but how about the paper? 
Even the 'Weekly Tribune' would be something; you 
know that sheet was devised for farmers !" 

" If this vacation isn't to be a punishment, but a pleas- 



94 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

ure, I think we had both better 'have what we want 
when we want it' !" I replied, for at that moment I 
spied the Infant out on the porch, and to hug her lady- 
ship was a swiftly accomplished desire. For some rea- 
son she seemed rather astonished at this very usual per- 
formance, and putting her hands, boy- fashion, into the 
pockets of her checked overalls, surveyed herself de- 
liberately, and then looking up at me rather reproach- 
fully remarked, "Tousin Maria says that now you and 
father are tumpany !" 

"And what is company?" I asked, rather anxious to 
know from what new point we were to be regarded. 

"Tumpany is people that comes to stay in the pink 
room wif trunks, and we play wif them and make them 
do somfing to amuse 'em all the time hard, and give 'em 
nicer things than we have to eat, and father shaves 
too much and tuts him and wears his little dinky coat 
to dinner. And by and by when they've gone away 
Ann-stasia says, 'Glory be !' and muvver goes to sleep. 
But muvver, if you are the tumpany, you can't go to 
sleep when you've gone away, can you?" 

A voice joined me in laughter, Maria Maxwell's, 
from inside the open window of the dining room. 
Looking toward the sound, I saw that, though the din- 
ing table itself had been cleared, a side table drawn close 



THEIR FORTUNATE ESCAPE 95 

to the window was set with places for two, a posy of 
poets' narcissus and the last lilies-of-the- valley between, 
while a folded napkin at one place rested on a news- 
paper ! 

"I thought we were to get our own breakfasts," I 
said, in a tone of very feeble expostulation, which plainly 
told that, at that particular moment, it was the last 
thing I wished to do. 

"You are, the very minute you feel like it, and not 
before ! You must let yourselves down gradually, and 
not bolt out of the house as if you had been evicted. 
If Bart went paperless and letterless this very first morn- 
ing, until he has met something that interests him more, 
he would think about the lack of the news and the mail 
all day until they became more than usually important !" 
So saying, Maria swept the stems and litter of the flowers 
she had been arranging into her apron, and annexing 
the Infant to one capable finger, all the other nine being 
occupied, she went down the path toward the garden 
for fresh supplies, leaving Ann-stasia, as the Infant 
calls her, to serve the coffee, a prerogative of which she 
would not consent to be bereft, not even upon the plea 
of lightening her labours ! 

"Isn't this perfect!" I exclaimed, looking toward 
a gap in the hills that was framed by the debatable 



96 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

knoll on one side and reached by a short cut across 
the old orchard and abandoned meadows of the farm 
above, the lack of cultivation resulting in a wealth of 
field flowers. 

"Entirely!" assented Bart, his spoon in the coffee 
cup stirring vigorously and his head enveloped in the 
newspaper. But what did the point of view matter: 
he was content and unhurried — what better beginning 
for a vacation ? In fact in those two words lies the real 
vacation essence. 

Meanwhile, as I munched and sipped, with luxurious 
irresponsibility, I watched Maria moving to and fro 
between the shrubs that bounded the east alley of the 
old garden. In her compressed city surroundings she 
had always seemed to me a very big sort of person, with 
an efficiency that was at times overpowering, whose 
brown eyes had a "charge bayonet" way of fixing one, 
as if commanding the attention of her pupils by force 
of eye had become a habit. But here, her most cher- 
ished belongings given room to breathe in the spare 
room that rambles across one end of the house, while 
her wardrobe has a chance to realize itself in the deep 
closet, Maria in two short days had become another 
person. 

She does not seem large, but merely well built. The 



THEIR FORTUNATE ESCAPE 97 

black gowns and straight white collars that she always 
wore, as a sort of professional garb, have vanished 
before a shirtwaist with an openwork neck and half 
sleeves, while the flesh exposed thereby is pink and 
wholesome. Hair not secured for the wear and tear 
of the daily rounds of school, but allowed to air itself, 
requires only a few hair-pins, and, if it is naturally wavy, 
follows its own will with good effect. While as to her 
eyes, what in them seemed piercing at short range melted 
to an engaging frankness in the soft light under the trees. 
In short, if she had been any other than Maria Maxwell, 
music teacher, Bart's staid cousin and the avowed 
family spinster, I should have thought of her as a fine- 
looking woman who only needed a magic touch of 
some sort to become positively handsome. Coffee and 
paper finished, I became aware that Bart was gazing 
at me. 

"Well," I said, extending my hand, "what next?" 
I had speedily made up my mind that Bart should 
take the initiative in our camping- out arrangement, 
and I therefore did not suggest that the first thing to be 
done was to set our camp itself in order. 

" Come out," he said, taking my hand in the same way 
that the Infant does when she wishes to lead the way to 
the discovery of the fairyland that lies beyond the mead- 



98 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

ows of the farm. So we sauntered out. Once under the 
sun, the same delicious thought occurred to each that, 
certain prudences having been seen to, we were for the 
time without responsibilities, and the fact made us laugh 
for the very freedom of it and pull one another hither 
and thither like a couple of children. 

Meanwhile the word knoll had not been uttered, but 
our feet were at once drawn in its direction by an ir- 
resistible force, and presently we found ourselves stand- 
ing at the lower end of the ridge and looking up the 
slope ! 

"I wish we had a picture of it as it must have been 
before the land was cleared, — it would be a great help 
in replanting," I said; "it needs something dense and 
bold for a background to the rocks." 

"The skeleton of the old barn on the other side spoils 
it; it ought to come down," was Bart's rejoinder. "It 
seems as if everything we wish to do hinges on some 
other thing." 

This barn had been set back against the knoll so that 
from the house the hayloft window seemed like a part of 
a low shed. Certainly our forbears knew the ways of 
the New England wind very thoroughly, judging by the 
way they huddled their houses and outbuildings in 
hollows or under hillsides to avoid its stress. And 



THEIR FORTUNATE ESCAPE 99 

when they couldn't do that, they turned sloping, hump- 
backed roofs toward the northeast to shed the snow 
and tempt the wind in its wild moods to play leap- 
frog and thus pass over. 

Such a roof as this has the house at the next farm, 
and judging by the location of the old hay barn, and the 
lay of the road, it must have once belonged to this ad- 
joining property rather than to ours. 

Slowly we circled the knoll, dropped into the hollow, 
and stood upon the uneven floor of wide chestnut planks 
that was to be our camp. Other lodgers had this barn 
besides ourselves and, unlike ourselves, hereditary ten- 
ants. Swallows of steel-blue wings hung their nests 
in a whispering colony against the beams, a pair of gray 
squirrels arched their tails at us and chattering whisked 
up aloft, where they evidently have a family in the dilapi- 
dated pigeon cote, while among some cornstalks and 
other litter in the low earth cellar beneath we could 
hear the rustling doubtless born of the swift little feet 
of mice. (Yes, I know that it is a feminine quality 
lacking in me, but I have never yet been able to conjure 
up any species of fear in connection with these playful 
little rodents.) 

The cots, table, chairs, and screens were as I had 
placed them several days ago ; but it was not the interior 
LOFG 



ioo THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

that held us but the view looking eastward across the 
sunlit meadows. In fact this side of the barn had the 
wide openings of an observatory. The gnarled apple 
trees of the orchard still bore pink- and- white wreaths 
on the shady side, and the purling of bluebirds blended 
with the voice of the river that ran between the hills 
afar off — the same stream that further up country was to 
be pent between walls and prisoned to make a reservoir. 
Sitting there, we gazed upon the soft yet glowing beauty 
of it all, with never a thought of pick and spade, grub 
axe or crowbar, to pry between the rocks of the knoll 
to find the depth or quality of its soil or test the planting 
possibilities. 

"Let us go up to the woods and see Blake ; he wrote 
me that he is to be there to-day, and suggested we should 
both meet him and see the treasure- trove to be found 
there before the spring blossoms are quite shed," said 
Bart, suddenly, fumbling among the letters in his pocket ; 
"and by the way, he said he would come back with us. 
He evidently forgets that we are not 'at home' to com- 
pany !" 

"But The Man from Everywhere is not company. 
He is simply a permanent institution and can go on 
dropping in as usual all summer if he likes. Ann-stasia 
adores him, for did he not bring her a beautiful sandal- 



THEIR FORTUNATE ESCAPE 101 

wood rosary of carved beads from somewhere and a pair 
of real tortoise-shell combs not two months ago ? And 
of course Maria Maxwell will not object ; why should 
she? he will come and go as usual, and she will hardly 
know that he is in the house." 

Barney harnessed the mild-faced horse of our neigh- 
bour's lending to that most comfortable of all vehicles, 
a buggy with an ample box behind and a top that 
can be dropped and made into a deep pocket to hold 
gleanings, or raised as a shield from sun and rain. 
Ah ! dear Mrs. Evan, is there anything that turns 
a sober, settled married couple backward to the en- 
chanted "engaged" region like driving away through 
the spring lanes in a buggy pulled by a horse who 
has had nature-loving owners, so that he seems to 
know by intuition when to pause and when it would be 
most acceptable to his passengers to have him wander 
from the beaten track and browse among the tender way- 
side grasses that always seem so much more tempting 
than any pasture grazing? 

As you will infer from this, Romeo is not only of a 
gentle, meditative disposition, but his harness is desti- 
tute of a check rein, overdraw, or otherwise. 

"Have you put in the trowels?" I asked, as we drove 
out the gate, the reins hanging so loosely from between 



102 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

Bart's knees, as he lit his pipe, that it was by mere 
chance that Romeo took the right turn. 

"No, I never thought of them ; this is merely a pros- 
pecting trip. Did you put in the lunch?" 

I was obliged to confess that I had not, but later on 
a box of sandwiches was found under the seat in com- 
pany with Romeo's nose- bag of oats, this indication 
being that, as Barney alone knew directly of our desti- 
nation, he must have informed Anastasia, who took pity, 
regarding us, as she does, as a cross between lunatics 
and the babes in the woods. 

We chose byways, and only crossed the macadamized 
highroad, that haunt of automobiles, once, and after an 
hour's sauntering crossed the river and drove into the 
woodlots to the north of it, now the property of the water 
company, who have already posted warning to trespass- 
ers. We straightway began to trespass, seeing The 
Man from Everywhere on horseback coming down to 
meet us. 

Without an apparent change of soil or altitude, the 
scenery at once grew more bold and dramatic. 

"What is it?" I said. "We have been driving 
through lanes lined by dogwood and yet that little tree 
below and the scrubby bit of hillside make a more per- 
fect picture than any we have seen !" 




The Pictorial Value of Evergreens. 



THEIR FORTUNATE ESCAPE 103 

Bart, who had left the buggy and was walking beside 
it with The Man, who had dismounted and led his nag, 
turned and looked backward, but did not answer. 

" It is the evergreens that give it the quality," said The 
Man, "even though they are only those stiff little Noah's- 
ark cedars. I notice it far and wide, wherever I go ; 
a landscape is never monotonous so long as there is a 
pine, spruce, hemlock, or bit of a cedar to bind it to- 
gether. I believe that is why I am never content for 
long in the land of palms !" 

"I love evergreens in winter, but I've never thought 
much about them in the growing leafy season ; they 
seem unimportant then," I said. 

"Unimportant or not, they are still there. Look at 
that wall of trees rising across the river ! Every conceiv- 
able tint of green is there, besides shades of pink and 
lavender in leaf case and catkin, but what dominates 
and translates the whole? The great hemlocks on the 
crest and the dark pointed cedars off on the horizon 
where the woodland thins toward the pastures. 
Whether you separate them or not, they are there. 
People are only just beginning to understand the value 
of evergreens in their home gardens, both as wind- 
breaks and backgrounds. No, I don't mean stark, 
isolated specimens, stiff as Christmas trees. You have 



io4 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

a magnificent chance to use them on that knoll of 
yours that you are going to restore ! " 

As he was speaking I thought Bart paid very scant 
attention, but following his pointing finger I at once saw 
what had absorbed him. On the opposite side of the 
river, extending into the brush lots, was a knoll the size 
and counterpart of ours, even in the way that it lay by 
the compass, only this was untouched, as nature planned 
it, and the model for our restoration. 

"Do you clear the land as far back as this?" Bart 
asked of The Man, eagerly. 

"Yes, not for the sake of the land, but for the 
boulders and loose rock on those ledges; all the rock 
hereabout will be little enough for our masonry!" 

"Then," said Bart, "I'm going to transplant the 
growth on this knoll, root and branch, herb and shrub, 
moss and fern, to our own, if it takes me until Christ- 
mas ! It isn't often that a man finds an illustrated plan 
with all the materials for carrying it out under his hand 
for merely the taking. There are enough young hem- 
locks up there to windbreak our whole garden. The 
thing I'm not sure about is just when it will do to begin 
the transplanting. Meanwhile I'll make a list of the 
plants we know that we can add to as others develop and 
blossom." 



THEIR FORTUNATE ESCAPE 105 

So he set to work on his list then and there, The Man 
from Everywhere helping, because he can name a plant 
from its leaves or even the twigs. 

I said that I would write to you at once and ask you or 
Evan to tell us about the best way to transplant all the 
wild things, except woody shrubs and trees, because we 
know it's best to wait for those until leaf fall. But as 
it turns out, I've waited six days — oh ! such aggravat- 
ing days when there is so much to decide and do ! 

That afternoon The Man rode home with us, as a 
matter of course, we quite forgetting that instead of 
late dinner, as usual, the meal would be tea, as the 
Infant and Maria Maxwell are to dine now at one ! 
As a shower threatened, it seemed much more natural 
for us to turn into the house than the camp, and before 
I knew how it happened I was sitting at the head of my 
own table serving soup instead of tea ! I dared not look 
at Maria, but as the meal was nearly ended she remarked 
demurely, looking out of the west window to where the 
shower was passing off slantwise, leaving a glorious 
sunset trail in its wake, " Wouldn't you like to have your 
coffee in camp, as the rain forced you to take dinner in- 
doors?" by which I knew that Maria would not allow 
us to lose sight of our outdoor intentions. 

Bart laughed, and The Man, gazing around the table 



106 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

innocently said, "Oh, has it begun, and am I intruding 
and breaking up plans? Why didn't you tell me?" 

So we went out through the sweet- smelling twilight, 
or rather the glow that comes before it, and as we idly 
sipped the coffee, lo and behold, the old farm lay before 
us — a dream picture painted by the twilight ! The little 
window-panes, iridescent with age and bulged into odd 
shapes by yielding sashes, caught the sunset hues and 
turned to fire opals ; the light mist rising over the green 
meadows where the flowers now slept with heads bent 
and eyes closed lent the green and pearl tints of those 
mysterious gems to which drops of rain or dew strung 
everywhere made diamond settings. 

"By Jove!" exclaimed Bart, "how beautiful the 
Opie farm looks to-night ! If a real- estate agent could 
only get a photograph of what we see, we should soon 
have a neighbour to rescue the place !" 

"You mustn't call it the Opie farm any more; it 
is Opal Farm from to-night!" I cried, "and no one 
shall buy it unless they promise to leave in the old win- 
dows and let the meadow and crab orchard stay as 
they are, besides giving me right of way through it 
quite down to the river woods !" 

But to get back by this circuitous route to the threat- 
ened danger with which I opened this letter — 



THEIR FORTUNATE ESCAPE 107 

The postman whistled, as he has an alluring way of 
doing when he brings the evening mail, always hoping 
that some one will come out for a bit of evening gossip, 
in which he is rarely disappointed. 

We all started to our feet, but Maria, whose special 
duty it had become to look over the mail, distanced us all 
by taking a short cut, regardless of wet grass. 

Talk branched into divers pleasant ways, and we had 
almost forgotten her errand when she returned and, 
breaking abruptly into the conversation, said to Bart, 
"Sorry to interrupt, but the postman reports that there 
are three large crates of live stock down at the station, 
and the agent says will you please send for them to- 
night, as he doesn't dare leave them out, there are so 
many strangers about, and they will surely stifle if he 
crowds them into the office !" 

"Live stock !" exclaimed Bart, "I'm sure I've bought 
nothing!" Then, as light broke in his brain, — 
"Maybe it's that setter pup that Truesdale promised 
me as soon as it was weaned, which would be about 
now !" 

"Would a setter pup come in three crates?" inquired 
The Man, solemnly. 

"It must be live plants and not live stock!" I said, 
coming to Bart's rescue, "for Aunt Lavinia Cortright 



108 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

wrote me last week that she was sending me some of her 
prize pink Dahlias, and some gladioli bulbs ! " 

" Possibly these might fill three large cases !" laughed 
Bart, in his turn. 

"Why not see if any of those letters throw light upon 
the mystery, and then I'll help 'hook up,' as I suppose 
Barney has gone home, and we will bring up the crates 
even if they contain crocodiles !" said The Man, cheer- 
fully. Complications always have an especially cheer- 
ing effect upon him, I've often noticed. 

The beams of a quarter moon were picturesque, but 
not a satisfactory light by which to read letters, espe- 
cially when under excitement, so Bart brought out a 
carriage lantern with which we had equipped our camp, 
and proceeded to sort the mail, tossing the rejected let- 
ters into my lap. 

Suddenly he paused at one, extra bulky and bearing 
the handwriting of his mother, weighed it on the palm 
of his hand, and opened it slowly. From it fell three of 
the yellow- brown papers upon which receipts for ex- 
pressage are commonly written; I picked them up 
while Bart read slowly — 
"My dear Son, 

" We were most glad to hear through daughter Mary 
of your eminently sensible and frugal plan for passing 



THEIR FORTUNATE ESCAPE 109 

your summer vacation in the improvement of your 
land without the expense of travel. 

"Wishing to give you some solid mark of ourapproval, 
as well as to contribute what must be a material aid to 
your income, father and I send you to-day, by express, 
three crates of Hens — one of White Leghorns, one of 
Plymouth Rocks, and one of Brown Dorkings, a male 
companion accompanying each crate, as I am told is 
usual. We did not select an incubator, thinking you 
might have some preference in the matter, but it will 
be forthcoming when your decision is made. 

" Of course I know that you cannot usually spare the 
time for the care of these fowls, but it will be a good out- 
door vocation for Mary, amusing and lucrative, besides 
being thoroughly feminine, for such poultry raising 
was considered even in my younger days. 

"A book, The Complete Guide to Poultry Farming, 
which I sent Mary a year ago on her birthday, as a mere 
suggestion, will tell her all she need know in the begin- 
ning, and the responsibility and occupation itself will 
be a good corrective for giving too much time to the 
beauties of the flower garden, which are merely pleas- 
urable. 

" I need not remind you that the different breeds should 
be housed separately, but you who always had a gift 



no THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

for carpentry can easily arrange this. Indeed it was 
only yesterday that in opening a chest of drawers I came 
across a small lead saw bought for sixpence, with which 
you succeeded in quite cutting through the large Wisteria 
vine on Grandma Bartram's porch ! I wished to punish 
you, but she said — 'No, Susanna, rather preserve the 
tool as a memento of his industry and patience.' 

" I wish that I could be near to witness your natural 
surprise on receiving this token of our approval, but I 
must trust Mary to write us of it. 
" Your mother, 

"Susan Bartram Penrose." 

With something between a groan and a laugh Bart 
dropped this letter into my lap, with the others. 

"So, after a successful struggle all these five years 
of our country life against the fatal magnetism of Hens 
that has run epidemic up and down the population of 
commuting householders, bringing financial prostration 
to some and the purely nervous article to others ; after 
avoiding ' The Wars of the Chickens, or Who scratched 
up those Early Peas,' — events as celebrated in local 
history as the Revolution or War of the Rebellion, — we 
are to be forced into the chicken business for the good of 
Bart's health and pocket, and my mental discipline, 



THEIR FORTUNATE ESCAPE in 

and also that a thrifty Pennsylvania air may be thrown 
about our altogether too delightful and altruistic summer 
arrangements! It's t-o-o bad !" I wailed. 

Of course I know, Mrs. Evan, that I was in a temper, 
and that my "in-laws" mean well, but since comfortable 
setting hens have gone out of fashion, and incubators 
and brooders taken their place, there is no more pleas- 
ure or sentiment about raising poultry than in manu- 
facturing any other article by rule. It's a business, and 
a very pernickety one to boot, and it's to keep Bart 
away from business that we are striving. Besides, that 
chicken book tells how many square feet per hen must 
be allowed for the exercising yards, and how the pens 
for the little chicks must be built on wheels and moved 
daily to fresh pasture. All the vegetable garden and 
flower beds and the bit of side lawn which I want for 
mother's rose garden would not be too much ! But I 
seem to be leaving the track again. 

Bart didn't say a word, except that "At any rate we 
must bring the fowls up from the station," and as the 
stable door was locked and the key in Barney's pocket, 
Bart and The Man started to walk down to the village 
to look him up in some of his haunts, or failing in this 
to get the express wagon from the stable. 

Maria and I sat and talked for some time about The 



ii2 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

Man from Everywhere, the chickens, and the location 
of the rose beds. She is surprisingly keen about flowers, 
considering that it is quite ten years since her own home 
in the country was broken up, but then I think this is 
the sort of knowledge that stays by one the longest of 
all. I hope that I have succeeded in convincing her 
that The Man is not company to be bothered about, 
but a comfortable family institution to come and go as 
he likes, to be taken easily and not too seriously. 

When the moon disappeared beyond the river 
woods, we went to the southwest porch, and there 
decided that the piece of lawn where we had some 
uninteresting foliage beds one summer was the best 
place for the roses and we might possibly have a trellis 
across the north wall for climbers. Would you plant 
roses in rows or small separate beds ? And how about 
the soil? But perhaps the plan you are sending me 
will explain all this. 

It was more than an hour before the men returned, 
and, not having found Barney, Bart had signed for the 
poultry in order to leave the express agent free to go 
home, and had left word at the stable for them to send 
the crates up as soon as the long wagon returned from 
Leighton, whither it had gone with trunks. 

After much discussion we decided that the fowls 



THEIR FORTUNATE ESCAPE 113 

should be housed for the night in the small yard back 
of the stable, where the Infant's cow (a present from 
my mother) spends her nights under the shed. 

"Did you find any signs of a chicken house on 
the place when you first came?" asked Maria, in a 
matter-of-fact tone, as if its location was the only thing 
now to be considered. 

"Yes, there was one directly in the fence line at the 
eastern gap where we see the Three Brothers Hills," 
said Bart, "and I've always intended to plant a flower 
bed of some sort there both to hide the gap in the wall 
and that something may be benefited by the hen ma- 
nure of decades that must have accumulated there !" 

"How would the place do for the new hen-house?" 
pursued Maria, relentlessly. 

"Not at all!" I snapped very decidedly; "it is di- 
rectly in the path the cool summer winds take on their 
way to the dining room, and you know at best fowl houses 
are not bushes of lemon balm !" 

"Then why not locate your bed of good- smelling 
things in the gap, and sup on nectar and distilled 
perfume," said The Man from Everywhere, sooth- 
ingly. 

"The very thing ! and I will write Mrs. Evan at once 
for a list of the plants in her 'bed of sweet odours,' 



ii 4 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

as she calls it." Then presently, as the men sat talking, 
Maria having gone into the house, our summer work 
seemed to lie accomplished and complete before me, 
even as you once saw your garden of dreams before its 
making, — the knoll restored to its wildness, ending not 
too abruptly at the garden in some loose rock ; the bed 
of sweet odours filling the gap between it and the gate 
of the little pasture in the rear; straight beds of hardy 
plants bordering the vegetable squares; the two seed 
beds topping the furthest bit, then a space of lawn with 
the straight walk of the old garden running through, 
to the sundial amid some beds of summer flowers at 
the orchard end, while the open lawn below the side 
porch is given up to roses ! 

I even crossed the fence in imagination, and took in 
the possibilities of Opal Farm. If only I could have 
some one there to talk flowers and other perplexities 
to, as you have Lavinia Cortright, without going through 
the front gate ! 

Two hours must have passed in pleasant chat, for 
the hall clock, the only one in the front part of the house 
we had not stopped, was chiming eleven when "wheels 
paused before the house and the latch of the gate that 
swung both ways gave its double click ! 

"The hens have come !" I cried in dismay, the dream 



THEIR FORTUNATE ESCAPE 115 

garden vanishing before an equally imaginary chorus 
of clucks and crows. 

Mr. Hale himself, the stable keeper, appeared at the 
house corner at the same moment that Bart and The 
Man reached it. Consternation sat upon his features, 
and his voice was fairly husky as he jerked out, — 
"They've gone, — clean gone, — Mr. Penrose, all three 
crates ! and the dust is so kicked up about that depot 
that you can't read out no tracks. Some loafers must 
hev seen them come and laid to get in ahead o' you, as 
hevin' signed the company ain't liable ! What ! don't 
you want to drive down to the sheriff's?" and Mr. 
Hale's lips hung loose with dismay at Bart's apparent 
apathy. 

"Mr. Hale," said Bart, in mock heroic tones, "I 
thank you for your sympathy, but because some troubles 
fall upon us unawares, it does not follow that we should 
set bait for others ! " 

Whereupon Mr. Hale the next day remarked that he 
didn't know whether or not Penrose was taking action 
in the matter, because you could never judge a good 
lawyer's meanings by his speech. 

However, if the hens escaped, so did we, and the next 
morning Bart forgot his paper until afternoon, so eager 
was he to test the depth of soil in the knoll. 



n6 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

I'm sending you a list of the wild things at hand. 
Will you tell me in due course which of the ferns are 
best for our purpose? I've noticed some of the larger 
ones turn quite shabby early in August. 



VII 

A SIMPLE ROSE GARDEN 

(Barbara Campbell to Mary Penrose) 

Oaklands, June 5. Yesterday my roses began to 
bloom. The very old bush of thorny, half-double brier 
roses with petals of soft yellow crepe, in which the sun- 
beams caught and glinted, took the lead as usual. 
Before night enough Jacqueminot buds showed rich 
colour to justify my filling the bowl on the greeting 
table, fringing it with sprays of the yellow brier buds 
and wands of copper beech now in its velvety perfection 
of youth. This morning, the moment that I crossed 
my bedroom threshold, the Jacqueminot odour wafted 
up. Is there anything more like the incense of praise 
to the flower lover ? Not less individual than the voice 
of friends, or the song of familiar birds, is the perfume 
of flowers to those who live with them, and among 
roses none impress this characteristic more poignantly 
than the crimson Jacqueminot and the silver-pink La 
France, equally delicious and absolutely different. 

As one who has learned by long and sometimes 

disastrous experience, to one who is now really plunging 

117 



n8 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

headlong into the sea of garden mysteries and under- 
currents for the first time, I give you warning ! if you 
have a real rose garden, or, merely what Lavinia 
Cortright calls hers, a rosary of assorted beads, try as 
far as possible to have all your seed sowing and trans- 
planting done before the June rose season begins, that 
you may give yourself up to this one flower, heart, soul, 
yes, and body also ! It was no haphazard symbolist 
that, in troubadour days, gave Love the rose for his 
own flower, for to be its real self the rose demands all 
and must be all in all to its possessor. 

As for you, Mary Penrose, who eschewed hen- 
keeping as a deceitful masquerade of labour, under the 
name of rural employment, ponder deeply before you 
have spade put to turf in your south lawn, and invest 
your birthday dollars in the list of roses that at this very 
moment I am preparing to send you, with all possible 
allurement of description to egg you on. For unless you 
have very poor luck, which the slope of your land, 
depth of soil, and your own pertinacity and staying 
qualities discount, many more dollars in quarters, 
halves, or entire will follow the first large outlay, and 
I may even hear of your substituting the perpetual 
breakfast prune of boarding-houses for your grapefruit 
in winter, or being overcome in summer by the prevail- 



A SIMPLE ROSE GARDEN 119 

ing health-food epidemic, in order that you may plunder 
the housekeeping purse successfully. 

But this is the time and hour that one gardener, on a 
very modest scale, may be excused if she overrates the 
charms of rose possessing, for it is a June morning, both 
bright and overcast by turns. A wood thrush is prac- 
tising his arpegios in the little cedar copse on one side, 
and a catbird is hurling every sort of vocal challenge 
and bedevilment from his ancestral syringa bush on 
the other, and all between is a gap filled with a vista 
of rose-bushes — not marshalled in a garden together, 
but scattered here, there, and everywhere that a good 
exposure and deep foothold could be found. 

As far as the arrangement of my roses is concerned, 
"do as I say, not as I do" is a most convenient motto. 
I have tried to formalize my roses these ten years past, 
but how can I, for my yellow brier (Harrison's) has 
followed its own sweet will so long that it makes almost 
a hedge. The Madame Plantiers of mother's garden 
are stalwart shrubs, like many other nameless bushes 
collected from old gardens hereabout, one declining 
so persistently to be uprooted from a particularly cheer- 
ful corner that it finds itself in the modern company of 
Japanese iris, and inadvertently sheds its petals to 
make rose-water of the birds' bath. 



120 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

An English sweetbrier of delicious leafage hobnobs 
with honeysuckle and clematis on one of the wren ar- 
bours, while a great nameless bush of exquisite blush 
buds, quite destitute of thorns (one of the many cuttings 
sent "the Doctor's wife" in the long ago), stands an 
unconscious chaperone between Marshall P. Wilder 
and Mrs. John Lang. 

I must at once confess that it is much better to keep 
the roses apart in long borders of a kind than to scatter 
them at random. By so doing the plants can be easily 
reached from either side, more care being taken not to 
overshadow the dwarf varieties by the more vigorous. 

Lavinia Cortright has left the old-fashioned June roses 
that belonged to her garden where they were, but is now 
gathering the new hybrids after the manner of Evan's 
little plan. In this way, without venturing into roses 
from a collector's standpoint, she can have representa- 
tives of the best groups and a continuous supply of buds 
of some sort both outdoors and for the house from the 
first week in June until winter. 

To begin with, roses need plenty of air. This does 
not mean that they flourish in a draught made by the 
rushing of north or east wind between buildings or 
down a cut or roadway. If roses are set in a mixed bor- 
der, the tendency is inevitably to crowd or flank them 



A SIMPLE ROSE GARDEN 121 

by some succulent annual that overgrows the limit we 
mentally set for it, thereby stopping the circulation 
of air about the rose roots, and lo ! the harm is done ! 

If you want good roses, you must be content to see a 
little bare, brown earth between the bushes, only allow- 
ing a narrow outside border of pansies, the horned 
bedding violets (cornuta), or some equally compact and 
clean- growing flower. To plant anything thickly be- 
tween the roses themselves prevents stirring the soil and 
the necessary seasonal mulchings, for if the ground- 
covering plants flourish you will dislike to disturb 
them. 

The first thing to secure for your rosary is sun — 
sun for all the morning. If the shadow of house, barn, 
or of distant trees breaks the direct afternoon rays in 
July and August, so much the better, but no overhead 
shade at any time or season. This does not prevent 
your protecting a particularly fine quantity of buds, 
needed for some special occasion, with a tentlike um- 
brella, such as one sees fastened to the seat in pedlers' 
wagons. A pair of these same umbrellas are almost a 
horticultural necessity for the gardener's comfort as 
well, when she sits on her rubber mat to transplant and 
weed. 

Given your location, consideration of soil comes next, 



122 THE Gx\RDEN, YOU, AND I 

for this car be controlled in a way in which the sun may 
not be, though if the ground chosen is in the bottom of a 
hollow or in a place where surface water is likely to 
settle in winter, you had better shift the location with- 
out more ado. It was a remark pertinent to all such 
places that Dean Hole made to the titled lady who 
showed him an elaborately planned rose garden, in 
a hollow, and waited for his praise. She heard only the 
remark that it was an admirable spot for ferns ! 

If your soil is clayey, and holds water for this reason, 
it can be drained by porous tiles, sunk at intervals in 
the same way as meadow or hay land would be drained, 
that is if the size of your garden and the lay of the land 
warrants it. If, however, the roses are to be in separate 
beds or long borders, the earth can be dug out to the 
depth of two and a half or three feet, the good fertile 
portion being put on one side and the clay or yellow 
loam, if any there be, removed. Then fill the hole 
with cobblestones, rubbish of old plaster, etc., for a foot 
in depth (never tin cans) ; mix the good earth thoroughly 
with one- third its bulk of well- rotted cow dung, a gener- 
ous sprinkling of unslaked lime and sulphur, and replace, 
leaving it to settle for a few days and watering it thor- 
oughly, if it does not rain, before planting. 

One of the advantages of planting roses by themselves 



A SIMPLE ROSE GARDEN 123 

is that the stirring of the soil and giving of special fer- 
tilizers when needful may be unhampered. 

In the ordinary planting of roses by the novice, the 
most necessary rules are usually the first violated. 
The roses are generally purchased in pots, with a certain 
amount of foliage and a few buds produced by forcing. 
A hole is excavated, we will suppose, in a hardened bor- 
der of hardy plants that, owing to the tangle of roots, can 
be at best but superficially dug and must rely upon top 
dressing for its nutriment. Owing to the difficulty of 
digging the hole, it is likely to be a tight fit for the pot- 
bound ball of calloused roots that is to fill it. Hence, 
instead of the woody roots and delicate fibres being care- 
fully spread out and covered, so that each one is sur- 
rounded by fresh earth, they are jammed just as they 
are (or often with an additional squeeze) into a rigid 
socket, and small wonder if the conjunction of the two 
results in blighting a,nd a lingering death rather than 
the renewal of vitality and increase. 

Evan, who has had a wide experience in watching the 
development of his plans, both by professional gardeners 
and amateurs, says that he is convinced more and more 
each day that, where transplant: gg of any sort fails, it 
is due to carelessness in the securing of the root anchors, 
rather than any fault of the dealer who supplies the 



124 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

plants, this of course applying particularly to all 
growths having woody roots, where breakage and 
wastage cannot be rapidly restored. When a rose is 
once established, its persistent roots may find means 
of boring through soil that in its first nonresistant state 
is impossible. While stiff, impervious clay is undesir- 
able, a soil too loose with sand, that allows the bush to 
shift with the wind, instead of holding it firmly, is 
quite as undesirable. 

In planting all hardy or half-hardy roses, — whether 
they are of the type that flower once in early summer, 
the hybrid perpetuals that bloom freely in June and 
again at intervals during late summer and autumn, 
or the hybrid teas that, if wisely selected and protected, 
combine the wintering ability of their hardy parents 
with the monthly blooming cross of the teas, — it is best 
to plant dormant field-grown plants in October, or else 
as early in April as the ground is sufficiently dry and 
frost free. 

These field-grown roses have better roots, and though, 
when planted in the spring, for the first few months the 
growth is apparently slower than that of the pot-grown 
bushes, it is much more normal and satisfactory, at least 
in the Middle and New England states of which I have 
knowledge. 



A SIMPLE ROSE GARDEN 125 

All roses, even the sturdy, old-fashioned damasks, 
Madame Plantier, and the like, should have some cov- 
ering in winter, such as stable litter of coarse manure 
with the straw left in. Hybrid perpetuals I hill up 
well with earth after the manner of celery banked for 
bleaching, the trenches between making good water 
courses for snow water, while in spring cow manure 
and nitrate of soda is scattered in these ruts before 
the soil is restored to its level by forking. 

The hybrid teas, of which La France is the best ex- 
ponent, should be hilled up and then filled in between 
with evergreen branches, upland sedge grass, straw or 
corn stalks, and if you have the wherewithal, they 
may be capped with straw. 

I do not care for leaves as a covering, unless some- 
thing coarse underlies them, for in wet seasons they form 
a cold and discouraging poultice to everything but the 
bob-tailed meadow mice, who love to bed and burrow 
under them. Such tea roses as it is possible to winter 
in the north should be treated in the same way, but there 
is something else to be suggested about their culture in 
another place. 

The climbing roses of arbours, if in very exposed situ- 
ations, in addition to the mulch of straw and manure, 
may have corn stalks stacked against the slats, which 



126 



THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 




IB 




Pillar 

for 

Corners of Rose Bed. 



makes a windbreak well 
worth the trouble. But the 
more tender species of climb- 
ing roses should be grown 
upon pillars, English fashion. 
These can be snugly st rawed 
up after the fashion of wine 
bottles, and then a conical 
cap of the waterproof tar 
'£• . paper used by builders drawn 

over the whole, the manure 
*| 4 being banked up to hold the 

*3 base firmly in place. With 

this device it is possible to 
grow the lovely Gloire de Di- 
jon, in the open, that fes- 
X.^/ W wwg toons the eaves of English 
cottages, but is our despair. 
Not long ago we invented 
an inexpensive "pillar" trel- 
lis for roses and vines which, 
standing seven feet high and 
built about a cedar clothes- 
pole, the end well coated with 
tar before setting, is both 
symmetrical and durable, not 



© 



Hybrid Tea. 



Grass. 



C 




® 



Tea or Summer. 



**>".+. 



Z5 -Q 



Hybrid Tea. 



© 



Grass. 




k 



Tea or Summer. 



© 



zs-o 



4-Q" 



A SIMPLE ROSE GARDEN 127 

burning tender shoots, as do the metal affairs, and 
costing, if the material is bought and a carpenter hired 
by the day, the moderate price of two dollars and a 
half each Including paint, which should be dark green. 

Evan has made a sketch of it for you. He finds it 
useful in many ways, and in laying out a new garden 
these pillars, set at corners or at intervals along the 
walks, serve to break the hot look of a wide expanse 
and give a certain formality that draws together with- 
out being too stiff and artificial. 

For little gardens, like yours and mine, I think deep- 
green paint the best colour for pergola, pillars, seats, 
plant tubs, and the like. White paint is clean and 
cheerful, but stains easily. If one has the surround- 
ings and money for marble columns and garden fur- 
niture, it must form part of a well-planned whole and 
not be pitched in at random, but the imitation article, 
compounded of cement or whitewashed wood, belongs 
in the region of stage properties or beer gardens ! 

The little plan I'm sending you needs a bit of ground 
not less than fifty feet by seventy-five for its develop- 
ment, and that, I think, is well within the limits of your 
southw^t lawn. The pergola can be made of rough 
cedar posts with the bark left on. Evan says that there 
are any quantity of <-Har trees in your river woods that 



128 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

are to be cleared for the reservoir, and you can prob- 
ably get them for a song. 

The border enclosing the grass plots is four feet in 
width, which allows you to reach into the centre from 
either side. Two rows of hybrid perpetuals or three of 
hybrid tea or summer roses can be planted in these 
beds, according to their size, thus allowing, at the mini- 
mum, for one hundred hybrid perpetuals, fifty hybrid 
teas, fifty summer roses, and eighteen climbers, nine 
on either side of the pergola, with four additional for 
the corner pillars. 

The irregular beds in the small lawns should not be 
planted in set rows, but after the manner of shrub- 
beries. Rugosa roses, if their colours be well chosen, 
are best for the centre of these beds. They are striking 
when in flower and decorative in fruit, while the hand- 
some leaves, that are very free from insects, I find most 
useful as green in arranging other roses the foliage 
of which is scanty. The pink-and-white damask 
roses belong here, and the dear, profuse, and graceful 
Madame Plan tier, — a dozen bushes of this hybrid China 
rose of seven leaflets are not too many. For seventy 
years it has held undisputed sway among hardy white 
roses and has become so much a part of old gardens 
that we are inclined to place its origin too far back in 



A SIMPLE ROSE GARDEN 129 

the past among historic roses, because we cannot 
imagine a time when it was not. This is a rose to 
pick by the armful, and grown in masses it lends an 
air of luxury to the simplest garden. 

Personally, I object to the rambler tribe of roses for 
any but large gardens, where in a certain sense the 
personality of flowers must sometimes be lost in decora- 
tive effect. A scentless rose has no right to intrude on 
the tender intimacies of the woman's garden, but 
pruned back to a tall standard it may be cautiously 
mingled with Madame Plantier with good effect, lend- 
ing the pale lady the reflected touch of the colour that 
gives life. 

For the pergola a few ramblers may be used for 
rapid effect, while the slower growing varieties are 
making wood, but sooner or later I'm sure that they will 
disappear before more friendly roses, and even to-day 
the old-fashioned Gem of the Prairies, Felicite Per- 
petual, and Baltimore Belle seem to me worthier. Col- 
our and profusion the rambler has, but equally so has 
the torrent of coloured paper flowers that pours out of 
the juggler's hat, and they are much bigger. 

No, I'm apt to be emphatic (Evan calls it pertina- 
cious), but I'm sure the time will come when at least 
the crimson rambler, trained over a gas-pipe arch, 



i 3 o THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

except for purely decorative purposes, will be as much 
disliked by the real rose lover as the tripod with the 
iron pot painted red and filled with red geraniums ! 

The English sweetbrier is a climbing or pillar rose, 
capable of being pruned into a bush or hedge that not 
only gives fragrance in June but every time the rain 
falls or dew condenses upon its magic leaves. This you 
must have as well as some of its kin, the Penzance 
hybrid- sweetbriers, either against the pergola or 
trained to the corner pillars, where you will become 
more intimate with them. 

You may be fairly sure of success in wintering well- 
chosen hybrid perpetual roses and the hybrid teas. 
If, for any reason, certain varieties that succeed in 
Lavinia Cortright's garden and ours do not thrive with 
you, they must be replaced by a gradual process of 
elimination. You alone may judge of this. I'm 
simply giving you a list of varieties that have thriven 
in my garden ; others may not find them the best. 
Only let rne advise you to begin with roses that have 
stood a test of not less than half a dozen years, for it 
really takes that long to know the influence of heredity 
in this highly specialized race. After the rose garden 
has shown you all its colours, it is easy to supplement a 
needed tint here or a proven newcomer there without 



A SIMPLE ROSE GARDEN 131 

speculating, as it were, in garden stock in a bull mar- 
ket. Too much of spending money for something that 
two years hence will be known no more is a financial 
side of the Garden-Goozle question that saddens the 
commuter, as well as his wife. It is a continual proof 
of man's, and particularly woman's, innocency that 
such pictures as horticultural pedlers show when ex- 
tolling their wares do not deter instead of encouraging 
purchasers. If the fruits and flowers were believable, 
as depicted, still they should be unattractive to eye 
and palate. 

The hybrid perpetuals give their great yield in June, 
followed by a more or less scattering autumn blooming. 
It is foolish to expect a rose specialized and proven by 
the tests climatic and otherwise of Holland, England, 
or France, and pronounced a perpetual bloomer, to live 
up to its reputation in this country of sudden extremes: 
unveiled summer heat, that forces the bud open be- 
fore it has developed quality, causing certain shades 
of pink and crimson to fade and flatten before the flower 
is really fit for gathering. Americans in general 
must be content with the half loaf, as far as garden roses 
are concerned, for in the cooler parts of the country, 
where the development of the flower is slower and more 
satisfactory, the winter lends added dangers. 



132 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

Good roses — not, however, the perfect flowers of the 
connoisseur or even of the cottage exhibitions of Eng- 
land — may be had from early June until the first week 
of July, but the hybrid tea roses that brave the latter 
part of that month and August are but short lived, 
even when gathered in the bud. Those known as sum- 
mer bedders of the Bourbon class, chiefly scentless, of 
which Appoline is a well-known example, are simply 
bits of decorative colour without the endearing attri- 
butes of roses, and garden colour may be obtained 
with far less labour. 

In July and August you may safely let your eyes 
wander from the rosary to the beds of summer annuals, 
the gladioli, Japan lilies, and Dahlias, and depend for 
fragrance on your bed of sweet odours. But as the 
nights begin to lengthen, at the end of August, you may 
prepare for a tea-rose festival, if you have a little fore- 
thought and a very little money. 

You have, I think, a florist in your neighbourhood 
who raises roses for the market. This is my method, 
practised for many years with comforting success. 
Instead of buying pot-grown tea roses in April or May, 
that, unless a good price (from twenty-five cents up) is 
paid for them, will be so small that they can only be 
called bushes at the season's end, I go to our florist 



A SIMPLE ROSE GARDEN 133 

and buy fifty of the bushes that he has forced dur- 
ing the winter and being considered spent are cast 
out about June first, in order to fill in the new stock. 

All such roses are not discarded each season, but the 
process is carried on in alternate benches and years, so 
that there are always some to be obtained. These 
plants, big, tired- looking, and weak in the branches, I 
buy for the nominal sum of ten dollars per hundred, 
five dollars' worth filling a long border when set out in 
alternating rows. On taking these home, I thin out 
the woodiest shoots, or those that interfere, and plant 
deep in the border, into which nitrate of soda has 
been dug in the proportion of about two ounces to a 
plant. 

After spreading out the roots as carefully as possible, 
I plant firmly and water thoroughly, but do not as yet 
prune off the long branches. In ten days, having given 
meanwhile two waterings of liquid manure, I prune the 
bushes back sharply. By this time they will have 
probably dropped the greater part of their leaves, and 
having had a short but sufficient nap, are ready to grow, 
which they proceed to do freely. I do not encourage 
bloom in July, but as soon as we have dew-heavy 
August nights it begins and goes on, increasing in 
quality until hard frost. Many of these bushes have 



134 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

wintered comfortably and on being pruned to within 
three inches of the ground have lasted many years. 

As to the varieties so treated, that is a secondary 
consideration, for under these circumstances you must 
take what the florist has to offer, which will of course 
be those most suitable to the winter market. I have 
used Perle des Jardins, Catherine Mermet, Bride and 
Bridesmaid, Safrano, Souvenir d'un Ami, and Bon 
Silene (the rose for button-hole buds) with equal success, 
though a very intelligent grower affirms that both Bride 
and Bridesmaid are unsatisfactory as outdoor roses. 

I do not say that the individual flowers from these 
bushes bear relation to the perfect specimens of green- 
house growth in anything but fragrance, but in this 
way I have roses all the autumn, "by the fistful," as 
Timothy Saunders's Scotch appreciation of values puts 
it, though his spouse, Martha Corkle, whose home 
memories are usually expanded by the perspective of 
time and absence, in this case speaks truly when she 
says on receiving a handful, "Yes, Mrs. Evan, they're 
nice and sweetish and I thank you kindly, but, ma'am, 
they couldn't stand in it with those that grows as free 
as corn poppies round the four-shillin'-a-week cottages 
out Gloucester way, and no disrespec' intended." 

The working season of the rose garden begins the 



A SIMPLE ROSE GARDEN 135 

first of April with the cutting out of dead wood and the 
shortening and shaping of last year's growth. With 
hardy roses the flowers come from fresh twigs on old 
growth. I never prune in the autumn, because winter 
always kills a bit of the top and cutting opens the tubu- 
lar stem to the weather and induces decay. Pruning 
is a science in itself, to be learned by experience. 
This is the formula that I once wrote on a slate and kept 
in my attic desk with my first Boke 0} the Garden. 

April 1. Uncover bushes, prune, and have the winter 
mulch thoroughly dug in. Place stakes in the centre 
of bushes that you know from experience will need them. 
Re- tie climbers that have broken away from supports, 
but not too tightly; let some sprays swing and arch in 
their own way. 

May. As soon as the foliage begins to appear, spray 
with whale-oil soap lotion mixed hot and let cool: 
strength — a bit the size of a walnut to a gallon of water. 
Do this every two weeks until the rosebuds show de- 
cided colour, then stop. This is to keep the rose Aphis 
at bay, the little soft green fly that is as succulent as the 
sap upon which it feeds. 

If the spring is damp and mildew appears, dust with 
sulphur flower in a small bellows. 

June. The Rose Hopper or Thrip, an active little 



136 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

pale yellow, transparent- winged insect that clings to the 
under side of the leaf, will now come if the weather is 
dry ; dislodged easily by shaking, it immediately returns. 
Remedy, spraying leaves from underneath with water 
and applying powdered helebore with a bellows. 

If Black Spot, a rather recent nuisance, appears on the 
leaves, spray with Bordeaux Mixture, bought of a horti- 
cultural dealer, directions accompanying. 

Meanwhile the leaf worm is sure to put in appearance. 
This is also transparent and either brownish green, or 
yellow, seemingly according to the leaves upon which it 
feeds. Remedy, if they won't yield to helebore (and 
they seldom do unless very sickly), brush them off into 
a cup. An old shaving brush is good for this., purpose, 
as it is close set but too soft to scrape the leaf. 

June 15. When the roses are in bloom, stop all 
insecticides. There is such a thing as the cure being 
worse than the disease, and a rose garden redolent of 
whale-oil soap and phosphates and encrusted with 
helebore and Bordeaux Mixture has a painful sugges- 
tion of a horticultural hospital. 

Now is the time for the Rose Chafer, a dull brownish 
beetle about half an inch long, who times his coming up 
out of the ground to feast upon the most fragrant and 
luscious roses. These hunt in couples and are wholly 



A SIMPLE ROSE GARDEN 137 

obnoxious. Picking into a fruit jar with a little kerosene 
in the bottom is the only way to kill them. In one 
day last season Evan came to my rescue and filled a 
quart jar in two hours; they are so fat and spunky 
they may be considered as the big game among garden 
bugs, and their catching, if not carried to an extreme, 
in the light of sport. 

July. See that all dead flowers are cut off and no pet- 
als allowed to mould on the ground. Mulch with short 
grass during hot, dry weather, and use liquid manure 
upon hybrid teas and teas every two weeks, imme- 
diately after watering or a rain. Never, at any season, 
allow a rose to wither on the bush ! 

August. The same, keeping on the watch for all 
previous insects but the rose beetle; this will have left. 
Mulch hybrid perpetuals if a dry season, and give 
liquid manure for the second blooming. 

September. Stir the ground after heavy rains, and 
watch for tendencies of mould. 

October. The same. 

November. Begin to draw the soil about roots soon 
after black frost, and bank up before the ground 
freezes, but do not add straw, litter, or manure in the 
trenches until the ground is actually frozen, which will 
be from December first onward, except in the case 



138 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

of teas, which should be covered gradually until the 
top is reached. 

By this you will judge, Mary Penrose, that a rosary 
has its labours, as well as pleasures, and that like all 
other joys it is accompanied by difficulties. Yet you 
can grow good roses if you will, but the difficulty is 
that most people wonH. I think, by the way, that remark 
belongs to Dean Hole of fragrant rose-garden memory, 
and of a truth he has said all that is likely to be 
spoken or written about the rose on the side of both 
knowledge and human fancy for many a day. 

Modern roses of the hybrid- perpetual and hybrid- 
tea types may be bought of several reliable dealers for 
twenty-five dollars per hundred, in two conditions, 
either grown on their own roots or budded on Manette 
or brier stock. Personally I prefer the first or natural 
condition, if the constitution of the plant is sufficiently 
vigorous to warrant it. There are, however, many in- 
dispensable varieties that do better for the infusion of 
vigorous brier blood. A budded rose will show the 
junction by a little knob where the bud was inserted ; 
this must be planted at least three inches below ground 
so that new shoots will be encouraged to spring from 
above the bud, as those below are merely wild, worth- 
less suckers, to be removed as soon as they appear. 




A Convenient Rose Bed. 



A SIMPLE ROSE GARDEN 139 

How can you tell wild suckers from the desired growth ? 
At first by following them back to the root until you 
have taken their measure, but as soon as experience 
has enlightened you they will be as easily recognized 
at sight as the mongrel dog by a connoisseur. Many 
admirable varieties, like Jacqueminot, Anne de Dies- 
bach, Alfred Colomb, Madame Plantier, and all the 
climbers, do so well on their own roots that it is foolish 
to take the risk of budded plants, the worse side of 
which is a tendency to decay at the point of juncture- 
Tea roses, being of rapid growth and flowering wholly 
upon new wood, are perfectly satisfactory when rooted 
from cuttings. 

Of many well- attested varieties of hybrid perpetuals, 
hybrid China, or other so-called June roses, you may at 
the start safely select from the following twenty. 

Pink, of various shades 

1. Anne de Diesbach. One of the most fragrant, 

hardy, and altogether satis- 
factory of hybrid perpetual 
roses. Forms a large bush, 
covered with large deep car- 
mine-pink flowers. Should 
be grown on own root. 



140 



THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 



2. Paul Neyron. 



Cabbage, or Rose 
of ioo Leaves. 



4. Magna Charta. 



5. Clio. 



6. Oakmont. 



7. Marchioness of 
Londonderry. 



Rose pink, of large size, 
handsome even when fully 
open. Fragrant and hardy. 

The Provence rose of 
history and old gardens, 
supposed to have been 
known to Pliny. Rich pink, 
full, fragrant, and hardy. 
Own roots. 

A fine fragrant pink 
rose of the hybrid China 
type. Not seen as often as 
it should be. Own roots. 

A vigorous grower with 
flesh-coloured and pink- 
shaded blossoms. 

Exquisite deep rose, fra- 
grant, vigorous, and with a 
long blooming season. 

White 

Free, full, and fragrant. 
Immense cream-white flow- 
ers, carried on long stems. 
Very beautiful. 



A SIMPLE ROSE GARDEN 



141 



8. Madame Plantier 
(Hybrid China). 



9. Margaret Dickson. 



10. Coquette des 
Blanches. 



11. Coquette des Alps. 



A medium- sized, pure 
white rose, with creamy 
centre ; flowers so profusely 
as to appear to be in clusters. 
Delicately fragrant, leaves 
deep green and remarkably 
free from blights. Per- 
fectly hardy ; forms so large 
a bush in time that it should 
be placed in the rose shrub- 
bery rather than amid 
smaller species. 

A splendid, finely formed, 
fragrant white rose, with 
deep green foliage. 

One of the very hardy 
white roses, an occasional 
pink streak tinting the out- 
side petals. Cup-shaped 
and a profuse bloomer. 

A very hardy bush, com- 
ing into bloom rather later 
than the former and lasting 
well. Satisfactory. 



142 



THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 



Red and Crimson 
12. General Jacque- Bright velvety crimson. 



minot. 



13. Alfred Colomb. 



14. Fisher Holmes. 



15. Marshal P. Wilder. 



The established favourite 
of its colour and class, 
though fashion has in some 
measure pushed it aside 
for newer varieties. May 
be grown to a large shrub. 
Fragrant and hardy. Best 
when in bud, as it opens 
rather flat. 

Bright crimson. Full, 
sweet. A vigorous grower 
and entirely satisfactory. 
If you can grow but one red 
rose, take this. 

A seedling of Jacque- 
minot, but of the darkest 
velvety crimson; fragrant, 
and blooms very early. 

Also a seedling of Jacque- 
minot. Vigorous and of 
well-set foliage. Full, large 
flowers of a bright cherry 
red. Very fragrant. 



A SIMPLE ROSE GARDEN 



H3 



16. Marie Bauman. 



17. Jules Margottin. 



18. John Hopper. 



19. Prince Camille de 
Rohan. 



20. Ulrich B runner. 



A crimson rose of delicious 
fragrance and lovely shape. 
This does best when budded 
on brier or Manette stock, 
and needs petting and a diet 
of liquid manure, but it will 
repay the trouble. 

A fine, old-fashioned, rich 
red rose, fragrant, and while 
humble in its demands, well 
repays liberal feeding. 

A splendid, early crimson 
rose, fragrant and easily 
cared for. 

The peer of dark red 
roses, not large, but rich in 
fragrance and of deep 
colour. 

One of the best out-of- 
door roses, hardy, carries its 
bright cerise flowers well, 
which are of good shape 
and substance; has few 
diseases. 



144 



THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 



Moss Roses 



i. Blanch Moreau 
(Perpetual). 

2. White Bath. 



3. Crested Moss. 



4. Gracilis. 



A pure, rich white; the 
buds, which are heavily 
mossed, borne in clusters. 

The most familiar white 
moss rose, sometimes tinged 
with pink. Open flowers 
are attractive as well as buds. 

Rich pink, deeply mossed, 
each bud having a fringed 
crest; fragrant and full. 

An exquisite moss rose of 
fairylike construction, the 
deep pink buds being 
wrapped and fringed with 
moss. 
5. Common Moss. A hardy pink variety, 

good only in the bud. 
The moss roses as a whole only bloom satisfactorily 

in June. 

Climbers 
1. 

Single pink flowers of the 
wild- rose type. Foliage of 
delicious fragrance, perfum- 
ing the garden after rain the 
season through. 



1. English Sweetbrier. 



A SIMPLE ROSE GARDEN 



145 



2. 

3- 

4- 
5- 

1. 



Penzance Hybrid Sweeibriers, 

Having Fragrant Foliage and Flowers 

0} Many Beautiful Colours 

Pink. 
Crimson. 



Amy Robsart. 

Anne of Geierstein. 

Minna. 

Rose Bradwardine. 



Climbing Jules 
Margottin. 



2. Baltimore Belle. 



3. Gem of the Prairie. 



2. 



White. 
Deep rose. 

Rosy carmine, very fra- 
grant and full, satisfactory 
for the pergola, but more so 
for a pillar, where in winter 
it can be protected from 
wind by branches or straw. 

The old-fashioned blush 
rose, with clean leaves and 
solid flowers of good shape. 
Blooms after other varieties 
are over. Trustworthy and 
satisfactory, though not fra- 
grant in flower or leaf. 

Red flowers of large size, 
but rather flat when open. 
A seedling from Queen of 



146 



THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 



Gem of the Prairie 
(continued). 



4. Climbing Belle 
Siebrecht (Hybrid 
Tea). 

5. Gloire de Dijon. 



the Prairie, and though not 
as free as its parent, it has 
the desirable quality of 
fragrance. 

Fragrant, vigorous, and of 
the same deep pink as the 
standard variety. Grow on 
pillars. 

Colour an indescribable 
blending of rose, buff, and 
yellow, deliciously fragrant, 
double to the heart of 
crumpled, crepelike petals. 
A tea rose and, as an out- 
door climber, tender north 
of Washington, yet it can be 
grown on a pillar by cover- 
ing as described on page 1 26. 



Hybrid Tea Roses 



1. La France. 



The fragrant silver-pink 
rose, with full, heavy flow- 
ers, — the combination of 
all a rose should be. In the 
open garden the sun changes 



A SIMPLE ROSE GARDEN 



147 



La France (continued). 



2. Kaiserin Augusta 
Victoria. 



3. Gruss an Teplitz. 



4. Killarney. 



its delicate colour quickly. 
Should be gathered in the 
bud at evening or, better yet, 
early morning. Very hardy 
if properly covered, and 
grows to a good-sized 
bush. 

White, with a lemon tint 
in the folds; the fragrance 
is peculiar to itself, faintly 
suggesting the Gardenia. 

One of the newer crimson 
roses, vigorous, with well- 
cupped flowers. Good for 
decorative value in the gar- 
den, but not a rose of senti- 
ment. 

One of the newer roses 
that has made good. Beau- 
tiful pointed buds of shell- 
pink, full and at the same 
time delicate. The foliage 
is very handsome. If well 
fed, will amply repay 
labour. 



148 



THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 



5. Souvenir de Mal- 
maison. 



6. Clothilde Soupert. 



7. Souvenir de Presi- 
dent Carnot. 



A Bourbon rose that 
should be treated like a 
hybrid tea. Shell-pink, 
fragrant flowers, that have 
much the same way of 
opening as Gloire de Dijon. 
A constant bloomer. 

A polyantha or cluster 
rose of vigorous growth and 
glistening foliage, quite as 
hardy as the hybrid tea. It 
is of dwarf growth and suit- 
able for edging beds of 
larger roses. The shell-pink 
flowers are of good form and 
very double ; as they cluster 
very thickly on the ends of 
the stems, the buds should 
be thinned out, as they have 
an aggravating tendency to 
mildew before opening. 

A charming rose with 
shadows of all the flesh tints, 
from white through blush to 
rose; sturdy and free. 



A SIMPLE ROSE GARDEN 



149 



8. Caroline Testout. 



1. Bon Silene. 



2. Papa Gontier. 



3. Safrano. 



Very large, round flowers, 
of a delicate shell- pink, 
flushed with salmon ; sturdy. 
Teas 

The old favourite, unsur- 
passed for fragrance as a 
button-hole flower, or table 
decoration when blended 
with ferns or fragrant foliage 
plants. Colour "Bon Si- 
lene," tints of shaded pink 
and carmine, all its own. 

A rose as vigorous as the 
hybrid teas, and one that 
may be easily wintered. 
Pointed buds of deep rose 
shading to crimson and as 
fragrant as Bon Silene, of 
which it is a hybrid. Flow- 
ers should be gathered in 
the bud. 

A true "tea" rose of 
characteristic shades of buff 
and yellow, with the tea 
fragrance in all its perfec- 



i5° 



THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 



Safrano (continued). 



4. Perle des Jardins. 



5. Bride. 



6. Bridesmaid. 



tion. Best in the bud. 
Vigorous and a fit compan- 
ion for Papa Gontier and 
Bon Silene. 

An exquisite, fragrant 
double rose of light clear 
yellow, suggesting the Mare- 
chal Niel in form, but 
of paler colour. Difficult 
to winter out of doors, but 
worth the trouble of lifting 
to cold pit or light cellar, 
or the expense of renewing 
annually. One of the 
lovable roses. 

The clear white rose, 
sometimes with lemon shad- 
ings used for forcing ; clean, 
handsome foliage and good 
fragrance. Very satisfac- 
tory in my garden when 
old plants are used, as de- 
scribed. 

The pink companion of 
the above with similar attri- 
butes. 



A SIMPLE ROSE GARDEN 151 

7. Etoille de Lyon. A vigorous, deep yellow 

rose, full and sweet. Almost 
as hardy as a hybrid tea and 
very satisfactory. 

8. Souvenir d'un Ami. A deliciously fragrant 

light pink rose, with 
salmon shadings. Very 
satisfactory and as hardy 
as some of the hybrid teas. 

Miscellaneous Roses for the Shrubbery 

1. Harrison's Yellow. An Austrian brier rose 

with clear yellow semi- 
double flowers. Early and 
very hardy. Should be 
grown on its own roots, as it 
will then spread into a 
thicket and make the rosary 
a mass of shimmering gold 
in early June. 

Damask Roses 

Should be grown on own 
root, when they will form 
shrubs five feet high. 

2. Madame Hardy. Pure white. Very fra- 



152 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

Madame Hardy grant, well-cupped flower, 

(continued). Time tried and sturdy. 

3. Rosa Damascena Rose colour. 
Triginitipela. 

Rugosa 

The tribe of Japanese 
origin, conspicuous as 
bushes of fine foliage and 
handsome shape, as well as 
for the large single blossoms 
that are followed by seed 
vessels of brilliant scarlet 
hues. 

4. Agnes Emily Carman. Flowers in clusters, 

"Jacqueminot" red, with 
long-fringed golden sta- 
mens. Continuous bloomer. 
Hardy and perfect. 

5. Rugosa alba. Pure white, highly 

scented. 

6. Rugosa rubra. Single crimson flowers of 

great beauty. 

7. Chedane Guinoisseau. Flowers, satin pink and 

very large. Blooms all the 
summer. 



A SIMPLE ROSE GARDEN 153 

Now, Mary Penrose, having made up your mind 
to have a rosary, cause garden line and shovel to be set 
in that side lawn of yours without hesitation. Do not 
wait until autumn, because you cannot plant the hardy 
roses until then and do not wish to contemplate bare 
ground. This sight is frequently wholesome and pro- 
vocative of good horticultural digestion. You need 
only begin with one- half of Evan's plan, letting the 
pergola enclose the walk back of the house, and later 
on you can add the other wing. 

If the pergola itself is built during the summer, you 
can sit under it, and by going over your list and colour 
scheme locate each rose finally before its arrival. By 
the way, until the climbers are well started you may 
safely alternate them with vines of the white panicled 
clematis, that will be in bloom in August and can be 
easily kept from clutching its rose neighbours ! 

By and by, when you have planted your roses, tucked 
them in their winter covers, and can sit down with a 
calm mind, I will lend you three precious rose books of 
mine. These are Dean Hole's Book about Roses, for 
both the wit and wisdom o't; The Amateur Gardener 's 
Rose Book, rescued from the German by John Weathers, 
F.R.H.S., for its common sense, well-arranged list of 
roses, and beautiful coloured plates, and H. B. Ell- 



i 5 4 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

wanger's little treatise on The Rose, a competent 
chronology of the flower queen up to 1901, written con- 
cisely and from the American standpoint. If I should 
send them now, you would be so bewildered by the 
enumeration of varieties, many unsuited to this climate, 
intoxicated by the descriptions of Rose-garden possi- 
bilities, and carried away by the literary and horticul- 
tural enthusiasm of the one-time master of the Deanery 
Garden, Rochester, that, like the child turned loose 
in the toy shop, you would lose the power of choosing. 
Lavinia Cortright lost nearly a year in beginning her 
rosary, owing to a similar condition of mind, and 

Evan and I long ago decided that when we read we 

< 
cannot work, and vice versa, so when the Garden of 

Outdoors is abed and asleep each year, we enter the 

Garden of Books with fresh delight. 

Have you a man with quick wit and a straight eye to 

be the spade hand during the Garden Vacation ? If not, 

make haste to find him, for, as you have had Barney for 

five years, he is probably too set in his ways to work 

at innovations cheerfully! 



VIII 
A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE 

(Mary Penrose to Barbara Campbell) 

June 21. The rosary has been duly surveyed, 
staked according to the plan, and the border lines 
fixed with the garden line dipped in whitewash, so 
that if we only plant a bed at a time, our ambition will 
always be before us. But as yet no man cometh to dig. 
This process is of greater import than it may seem, 
because with the vigorous three-year-old sod thus ob- 
tained do we purpose to turf the edges of the beds 
for hardy and summer flowers that border the squares 
of the vegetable garden. These strips now crumble 
earth into the walks, and the slightest footfall is fol- 
lowed by a landslide. We had intended to use narrow 
boards for edging, but Bart objects, like the old retainer 
in Kipling's story of An Habitation Enforced, on the 
ground that they will deteriorate from the beginning 
and have to be renewed every few years, whereas the 
turf will improve, even if it is more trouble to care for. 

At present the necessity of permanence is one of the 
i55 



156 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

things that is impressing us both, for after us — the 
Infant ! Until a year ago I had a positive dread of being 
so firmly fixed anywhere that to spread wings and fly 
here and there would be difficult, but now it seems 
the most delightful thing to be rooted like the old apple 
tree on the side hill, the last of the old orchard, that has 
leaned against the upland winds so many years that it 
is well-nigh bent double, yet the root anchors hold 
and it is still a thing of beauty, like rosy-cheeked old 
folk with snowy hair. I do not think that I ever 
realized this in its fulness until I left the house and came 
out, though but a short way, to live with and in it all. 

You were right in thinking that Barney would not en- 
courage innovations, — he does not ! He says that 
turf lifted in summer always lies uneasy and breeds 
worms. 

This seems to be an age for the defiance of horticultu- 
ral tradition, for we are finding out every day that you 
can "lift" almost anything of herbaceous growth at 
any time and make it live, if you are willing to take pains 
enough, though of course transplanting is done with 
less trouble and risk at the prescribed seasons. 

The man-with-the-shovel question is quite a serious 
one hereabouts at present, for the Water Company 
has engaged all the rough-and-ready labourers for a long 



A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE 157 

season and that has raised both the prices and the noses 
of the wandering accommodators in the air. Something 
will probably turn up. Now we are transplanting hardy- 
ferns; for though the tender tops break, there is yet 
plenty of time for a second growth and rooting before 
winter. 

Meanwhile there is a leisurely old carpenter who 
recently turned up as heir of the Opal Farm, Amos 
Opie by name, who is thinking of living there, 
and has signified his willingness to undertake the per- 
gola by hour's work, "if he is not hustled," as soon as 
the posts arrive. 

The past ten days have been full of marvellous dis- 
coveries for the "peculiar Penroses," as Maria Maxwell 
heard us called down at the Golf Club, where she rep- 
resented me at the mid- June tea, which I had wholly 
forgotten that I had promised to manage when I sent out 
those P. P. C. cards and stopped the clocks ! 

It seems that the first impression was that financial 
disaster had overtaken us, when instead of vanishing in 
a touring car preceded by tooting and followed by a 
cloud of oil-soaked steam, we took to our own woods, 
followed by Barney with our effects in a wheelbarrow. 
It is a very curious fact — this attributing of every 
action a bit out of the common to the stress of pocket 



158 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

hunger. It certainly proves that advanced as we are 
supposed to be to-day as links in the evolutionary 
chain, we have partially relapsed and certainly show 
strong evidences of sheep ancestry. 

Haven't you noticed, Mrs. Evan, how seldom people 
are content to accept one's individual tastes or desire to 
do a thing without a good and sufficient reason therefor ? 
It seems incomprehensible to them that any one should 
wish to do differently from his neighbour unless from 
financial incapacity; the frequency with which one is 
suspected of being in this condition strongly points to 
the likelihood that the critics themselves chronically 
live beyond their means and in constant danger of col- 
lapse. 

If this was thought of us a few weeks ago, it seems to 
have been sidetracked by Maria Maxwell's contribution 
to, and management of, the golf tea. She is said not 
only to have compounded viands that are ordinarily 
sold in exchange for many dollars by New York 
confectioners, but she certainly made more than a pre- 
sentable appearance as "matron" of the receiving com- 
mittee of young girls. Certainly Maria with a music 
roll, a plain dark suit, every hair tethered fast, and com- 
mon-sense shoes, plodding about her vocation in snow 
and mud, and Maria "let loose," as Bart calls it, are a 



A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE 159 

decided contrast. Except that she has not parted with 
her sunny common-sense, she is quite a new person. 
Of course I could not have objected to it, but I was afraid 
that she might take it into her head to instruct the Infant 
in vocal music after the manner of the locustlike sounds 
that you hear coming over the lowered tops of school 
windows as soon as the weather grows warm, or else 
take to practising scales herself, for we had only known 
the technical part of her calling. In short, we feared 
that we should be do-re-mi-ou'd past endurance. In- 
stead of which, scraps of the gayest of ballads float over 
the knoll in the evening, and the Infant's little shrill 
pipe is being inoculated with real music, via Mother 
Goose melodies sung in a delightfully subdued con- 
tralto. 

From the third day after her arrival people began to 
call upon Maria. I made such a positive declaration of 
surrender of all matters pertaining to the household, 
including curiosity, when Maria took charge, — and she 
in return promised that we should not be bothered with 
anything not "of vital importance to our interests," — 
that, unless she runs through the housekeeping money 
before the time, I haven't a ghost of an excuse for asking 
questions, — but I do wonder how she manages ! Also, 
to whom the shadows belong that cross the south piazza 



160 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

at night or intercept the rays of the dining-room lamp, 
our home beacon of dark nights. 

In addition to the usual and convenient modern shirt- 
waist-and-skirt endowment, Maria had when she came 
but two gowns, one of black muslin and the other white, 
with improvised hats to match, — simple, graceful 
gowns, yet oversombre. 

But lo ! she has blossomed forth like a spring seed 
catalogue, and Bart insists that I watched the gate with 
his field-glass an hour the afternoon of the tea, to see 
her go out. T did no such thing ; I was looking at an 
oriole's nest that hangs in the elm over the road, but 
I could not help seeing the lovely pink flower hat that 
she wore atilt, with just enough pink at the neck and 
streamers at the waist of her dress to harmonize. 

I visited the larder that evening for supper supplies, 
— yes, we have become so addicted to the freedom of 
outdoors that for the last few days Bart has brought 
even the dinner up to camp, waiting upon me beauti- 
fully, for now we have entirely outgrown the feeling of 
the first few days that we were taking part in a comedy, 
and have found ourselves, as it were — in some ways, 
I think, for the first time. 

Anastasia seemed consumed with a desire for a dish 
of gossip, but was not willing to take the initiative. She 



A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE 161 

chuckled to herself and tried several perfectly transpar- 
ent ways of attracting my attention, until I took pity 
on her, a very one-sided pity too, for, between ourselves, 
Anastasia is the domestic salt and pepper that gives the 
Garden Vacation a flavour that I should sadly miss. 

"Miss Marie," she exclaimed, "do be the tastiest 
creaytur ever I set me eyes on." (She refused absolutely 
to call her Maria ; that name, she holds, is only fit for a 
settled old maid, "and that same it's not sure and fair 
to mark any woman wid being this side the grave." ) 

Then I knew that I only had to sit down and raise 
my eyes to Anastasia's face in an attitude of attention, 
to open the word gates, and this I did. 

"Well, fust off win she got the invite ter sing at 
the swarry that tops off the day's doings down to 
that Golf Club, she was that worried about hats you 
never seen the like ! She wus over ter Bridgeton, and 
Barney swore he drove her ter every milliner in the 
place, and says she ter me, pleasant like, that evenin', 
when returned, in excuse fer havin' nothin' to show, 
'Oh, Annie, Annie, it would break yer heart to see the 
little whisp of flowers they ask five dollars for ; to fix me 
hats a trifle would part me from a tin-dollar bill !'" 

(The sentiments I at once perceived might be Maria's, 
but their translation Anastasia's.) 



i6z THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

"Now Miss Marie, she's savin' like, — not through 
meanness, but because she's got the good Irish heart 
that boils against payin' rint, and she's hoardin' crown by 
shillin' till she kin buy her a cabin and to say a pertaty 
patch for a garden, somewhere out where it's green ! 
Faith ! but she'll do it too ; she's a manager ! Yez 
had orter see the illigant boned turkey she made out o' 
veal, stuck through with shrivelled black ground apples, 
she called 'puffles' ! an glued it up foine wid jelly. 
Sez I, 'They'll never know the difference,' but off she 
goes and lets it out and tells the makin' uv it ter 
every woman on the hill, — that's all I hev agin her. 
She's got a disease o' truth-telling when there's no need 
that would anguish the saints o' Hiven theirselves ! 

'"I kin make better 'n naturaler-lookin' hats fer 
nothin', here at home, than they keep in N' York,' she 
says after looking out the back window a piece. 'And 
who'll help yer?' says I, 'and where'll yer git the 
posies and what all?' 

'"I bought some bolts o' ribbon to-day/ says she, 
smilin'; 'and fer the rest, the garden, you, and I will 
manage it together, if you'll lend me a shelf all to meself 
in the cold closet whenever I need it ! ' Sure fer a mo- 
ment I wuz oneasy, fer I thought a wild streak run 
branchin' through all the boss's family!" 



A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE 163 

(At the words Garden, You, and I, there flashed 
through me the thought of some telepathic influence at 
work.) 

'"The garden's full o' growin' posies that outshames 
the flower-makers ; watch out and see, Anastasia ! ' 

"Well and I did!! This mornin' early she picks a 
lot o' them sticky pink flowers by the stoop, the colour 
o' chiny shells, wid spokes in them like umbrellas, and 
the thick green leaves, and after leavin' 'em in water a 
spell, puts 'em in me cold closet, a small bit o' wet moss 
tied to each stem end wid green sewin' silk ! A piece 
after dinner out she comes wid the hat that's covered 
with strong white lace, and she cocks it this way and 
pinches it that and sews the flowers to it quick wid a 
big thread and a great splashin' bow on behind, and 
into the cold box agin ! 

'"That's fer this afternoon,' says she, and before 
she wore it off (a hat that Eve, mother o' sin, and us all 
would envy), she'd another ready for the night ! 'Will 
it spoil now and give yer away, I wonder ? ' says I, 
anxious like. 

"'Not fer two hours, at least; and it'll keep 
me from stayin' too long ; if I do, it'll wither away and 
leave me all forlorn, like Cinderella and her pumpkin 
coach!' she said a-smilin' kind uv to herself in me 



164 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

kitchen mirror, when she put the hat on. 'But I'm 
not insultin' God's flowers tryin' to pass them off 
for French ones, Annie,' says she. 'I'm settin' a new 
garden fashion ; let them follow who will ! ' and away 
wid her! That same other is in here now, and it's 
no sin to let yer peep, gin it's ye own posies and ye chest 
they're in. " So, throwing open the door Anastasia re- 
vealed the slate shelf covered by a sheet of white paper, 
while resting on an empty pickle jar, for a support, was 
the second hat, of loosely woven black straw braid, an 
ornamental wire edging the brim that would allow 
it to take a dozen shapes at will. It was garlanded by 
a close-set wreath of crimson peonies grading down to 
blush, all in half bud except one full-blown beauty 
high in front and one under the brim set well against 
the hair, while covering the wire, caught firm and close, 
were glossy, fragrant leaves of the wild sweetbrier made 
into a vine. 

Ah, well, this is an unexpected development born of 
our experiment and a human sort of chronicle for The 
Garden, You, and I. 

One of the most puzzling things in this living out-of- 
doors on our own place is the reversal of our ordinary 
viewpoints. Never before did I realize how we look 
at the outdoor world from inside the house, where inani- 



A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE 165 

mate things force themselves into comparison. Now 
we are seeing from outside and looking in at ourselves, 
so to speak, very much like the robin, who has his third 
nest, lop-sided disaster having overtaken the other two, 
in the old white lilac tree over my window. 

Some of our doings, judged from the vantage point of 
the knoll, are very inconsistent. The spot occupied 
by the drying yard is the most suitable place for the new 
strawberry bed, and is in a direct line between the fence 
gap, where my fragrant things are to be, and the Rose 
Garden. Several of the walks that have been laid 
out according to the plan, when seen from this height, 
curve around nothing and reach nowhere. We shall 
presently satisfy their empty embraces with shrubs 
and locate various other conspicuous objects at the 
terminals. 

Also, the house is kept too much shut up; it looks 
inhospitable, seen through the trees, with branches 
always tossing wide to the breeze and sun. Even if 
a room is unoccupied by people, it is no reason why the 
sun should be barred out, and at best we ourselves surely 
spend too much time in our houses in the season when 
every tree is a roof. We have decided not to move in- 
doors again this summer, but to lodge here in the time 
between vacations and to annex the Infant. 



166 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

Oh, Mrs. Evan, dear ! there is one thing in which 
The Man from Everywhere reckoned without his host ! 
Stopping the clocks when we went in camp did not dis- 
lodge Time from the premises ; rather did it open the 
door to his entrance hours earlier than usual, when one 
of the chiefest luxuries we promised ourselves was late 
sleeping. 

Stretched on our wire- sp ringed, downy cots (there is 
positively no virtue in sleeping on hard beds, and Bart 
considers it an absolute vice), there is a delicious period 
before sleep comes. Bats flit about the rafters, and an 
occasional swallow twitters and shifts among the beams 
as the particular nest it guarded grew high and diffi- 
cult to mount from the growth of the lusty brood within . 
The scuffle of little feet over the rough floor brings indo- 
lent, half- indifferent guessing as to which of the lesser 
four-foots they belonged. The whippoorwills down in 
the river woods call until they drop off, one by one, and 
the timid ditty of a singing mouse that lives under the 
floor by my cot is the last message the sandman sends 
to close our eyes before sleep. And such sleep ! That 
first steel-blue starlit night in the open we said that 
we meant to sleep and sleep it out, even if we lost a 
whole day by it. It seemed but a moment after sleep had 
claimed us, when, struggling through the heavy darkness, 



A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE 167 

came far-away light strands groping for our eyes, and 
soft, half-uttered music questioning the ear. Returning 
I opened my eyes, and there was the sun struggling 
slowly through the screen of white birches in Opie's wood 
lot, and scattering the night mists that bound down the 
Opal Farm with heavy strands ; the air was tense with 
flitting wings, bird music rose, fell, and drifted with the 
mist, and it was only half-past four ! You cannot kill 
time, you see, by stopping clocks — with nature day Is, 
beyond all dispute. In two days, by obeying instead 
of opposing natural sun time, we had swung half round 
the clock, only now and then imitating the habits of our 
four-footed brothers that steal abroad in the security 
of twilight. 

June 24. Amos Opie, the carpenter, owner of Opal 
Farm, is now keeping widower's hall in the summer 
kitchen thereof. A thin thread of smoke comes idly from 
the chimney of the lean-to in the early morning, and at 
evening the old man sits in the well-house porch reading 
his paper so long as the light lasts, a hound of the 
ancient blue-spotted variety, with heavy black and tan 
markings, keeping him company. 

These two figures give the finishing touch to the pic- 
ture that lies beyond us as we look from the sheltered cor- 
ner of the camp, and strangely enough, though old Opie 



168 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

is not of the direct line and has never lived in this part 
of New England before, he goes about with a sort of 
half- reminiscent air, as if picking up a clew long lost, 
while Dave, the hound, at once assumed proprietary 
rights and shows an uncanny wisdom about the well- 
nigh fenceless boundaries. After his master has gone 
to bed, Dave will often come over to visit us, after the 
calm fashion of a neighbour who esteems it a duty. 
At least that was his attitude at first ; but after a while, 
when I had told him what a fine, melancholy face he had, 
that it was a mistake not to have christened him Hamlet, 
and that altogether he was a good fellow, following up 
the conversation with a comforting plate of meat scraps 
(Opie being evidently a vegetarian), Dave began to 
develop a more youthful disposition. A week ago 
Bart's long-promised, red setter pup arrived, a spirit 
of mischief on four clumsy legs. Hardly had I taken 
him from his box (I wished to be the one to "first foot" 
him from captivity into the family, for that is a cour- 
tesy a dog never forgets) when we saw that Dave was 
sitting just outside the doorless threshold watching 
solemnly. 

The puppy, with a gleeful bark, licked the veteran 
on the nose, whereat the expression of his face changed 
from one of uncertainty to a smile of indulgent if ma- 



A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE 169 

ture pleasure, and now he takes his young friend on a 
daily ramble down the pasture through the bit of marshy 
ground to the river, always bringing him back within 
a reasonable length of time, with an air of pride. Evi- 
dently the hound was lonely. 

The Man from Everywhere, who prowls about even 
more than usual, using Bart's den for his own mean- 
while, says that the setter will be ruined, for the hound 
will be sure to trail him on fox and rabbit, and that 
in consequence he will never after keep true to birds, but 
somehow we do not care, this dog-friendship between 
the stranger and the pup is so interesting. 

By the way, we have financially persuaded Opie to 
leave his straggling meadow, that carpets our vista to 
the river, for a wild garden this summer, instead of sell- 
ing it as "standing grass," which the purchasers had 
usually mown carelessly and tossed into poor-grade 
hay, giving a pittance in exchange that went for 
taxes. 

So many flowers and vines have sprung up under 
shelter of the tumble-down fences that I was very anx- 
ious to see what pictures would paint themselves if the 
canvas, colour, and brushes were left free for the season 
through. Already we have had our money's worth, 
so that everything beyond will be an extra dividend. 



170 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

The bit of marshy ground has been for weeks a lake of 
iris, its curving brink foamed with meadow rue and 
Osmundas that have all the dignity of palms. 

Now all the pasture edge is set with wild roses and 
wax-white blueberry flowers. Sundrops are grouped 
here and there, with yellow thistles ; the native sweet- 
brier arches over gray boulders that are tumbled to- 
gether like the relic of some old dwelling ; and the purple 
red calopogon of the orchid tribe adds a new colour to 
the tapestry, the cross-stitch filling being all of field 
daisies. Truly this old farm is a well-nigh perfect wild 
garden, the strawberries dyeing the undergrass red, 
and the hedges bound together with grape-vines. It 
does not need rescuing, but letting alone, to be the de- 
light of every one who wishes to enjoy. 

On being approached as to his future plans, Amos 
Opie merely sets his lips, brings his finger-tips together, 
and says, "I'm open to offers, but I'm not bound to 
set a price or hurry my decisions." 

Meanwhile I am living in a double tremor, of delight 
at the present and fear lest some one may snap up the 
place and give us what the comic paper called a Queen 
Mary Anne cottage and a stiff lawn surrrounded by a 
gas-pipe fence to gaze upon. O for a pair of neigh- 
bours who would join us in comfortable vagabondage, 



A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE 171 

leave the white birches to frame the meadows and 
the wild flowers in the grass ! 

June 25. We have been having some astonishing 
thunder-storms of nights lately, and I must say that 
upon one occasion I fled to the house. Two nights ago, 
however, the sun set in an even sky of lead, there was no 
wind, no grumblings of thunder. We had passed a 
a very active day and finished placing the stakes on the 
knoll in the locations to be occupied by shrubs and 
trees, all numbered according to the tagged specimens 
over in the reservoir woods. 

The Man from Everywhere suggested this system, 
an adaptation, he says, from the usual one of number- 
ing stones for a bit of masonry. It will prevent confu- 
sion, for the perspective will be different when the 
leaves have fallen, and as we lift the bushes, each 
one will go to its place, and we shall not lose a year's 
growth, or perhaps the shrub itself, by a second moving. 
Our one serious handicap is the lack of a pair of extra 
hands, in this work as in the making of the rose bed, 
for our transplanting has developed upon a wholesale 
plan. Barney does not approve of our passion for the 
wild ; besides, between potatoes and corn to hoe, celery 
seedlings to have their first transplanting, vegetables to 
pick, turf grass to mow, and edges to keep trim, with a 



172 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

horse and cow to tend in addition, nothing more can 
be expected of him. 

I was half dozing, half listening, as usual, to the various 
little night sounds that constantly pique my curiosity, 
for no matter how long you may have lived in the country 
you are not wholly in touch with it until you have slept 
at least a few nights in the open, — when rain began to 
fall softly, an even, persevering, growing rain, entirely 
different from the lashing thunder-showers, and though 
making but half the fuss, was doubly penetrating. 
Thinking how good it was for the ferns, and venturing 
remarks to Bart about them, which, however, fell 
on sleep-deaf ears, I made sure that the pup was in his 
chosen place by my cot and drifted away to shadow 
land, glad that something more substantial than boughs 
covered me ! 

I do not know how long it was before I wakened, but 
the first sound that formulated itself was the baying 
of Dave, the hound, from the well-house porch, where 
he slept when his evening rambles kept him out until 
after Amos Opie had gone to bed. Having freed his 
mind, Dave presently stopped, but other nearer-by 
sounds made me again on the alert. 

The rain, that was falling with increasing power, held 
one key ; the drip from the eaves and the irregular gush 



A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE 173 

from a broken waterspout played separate tunes. I am 
well used to the night-time bravado of mice, who fight 
duels and sometimes pull shoes about, of the pranks 
of squirrels and other little wood beasts about the floor, 
but the noise that made me sit up in the cot and reach 
over until I could clutch Bart by the arm belonged to 
neither of these. There was a swishing sound, as of 
water being wrung from something and dropping on 
the floor, and then a human exclamation, blended of a 
sigh, a wheeze, and a cough, at which the pup wakened 
with a growl entirely out of proportion to his age and 
inexperience. 

"I wonder, now, is that a dog or only uts growl ter sind 
me back in the wet fer luv av the laugh at me?" chirped 
a voice as hoarse as a buttery brogue would allow it 
to be. 

My clutch had brought Bart to himself instantly, 
and at the words he turned the electric flashlight, 
that lodged under his pillow, full in the direction of 
the sound, where it developed a strange picture and 
printed it clearly on the opposite wall. 

In the middle of the circle of light was a little barefoot 
man, in trousers and shirt; a pair of sodden shoes lay 
at different angles where they had been kicked off, 
probably making the sound that had wakened me, and at 



174 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

the moment of the flash he was occupied in the wringing 
out of a coat that seemed strangely long for the short 
frame upon which it had hung. The face turned tow- 
ard us was unmistakably Irish, comical even, entirely 
unalarming, and with the expression, blended of terror 
and doubt, that it now wore, he might have slipped from 
the pages of a volume of Lever that lay face down on 
the table. The nose turned up at the tip, as if asking 
questions of the eyes, that hid themselves between the 
half- shut lids in order to avoid answering. The skin 
was tanned, and yet you had a certain conviction that 
minus the tan the man would be very pale, while the 
iron-gray hair that topped the head crept down to form 
small mutton-chop whiskers and an Old Country 
throat thatch that was barely half an inch long. 

Bart touched me to caution silence, and I, seeing at 
once that there was nothing to fear, waited develop- 
ments. 

As soon as he could keep his eyes open against the 
sudden glare, the little man tried to grasp the column 
of light in his fingers, then darted out of it, and I 
thought he had bolted from the barn ; but no, he was in- 
stantly back again, and dilapidated as he was, he did not 
look like a professional tramp. 

"No, yez don't fool Larry McManus agin ! Yez are a 



A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE 175 

mane, cold light with all yer blinkin', and no fire beneath 
to give 'im the good uv a cup o' tay or put a warm heart 
in 'im ! Two nights agone 'twas suspicion o' rats kep' 
me from shlapin', yesternight 'twas thought o' what wud 
become of poor Oireland (Mary rest her) had we 
schnakes there ter fill the drames o' nights loike they 
do here whin a man's a drap o'er full o' comfort. 'Tis 
a good roof above ! Heth, thin, had I a whisp o' straw 
and a bite, wid this moonlight fer company, I'd not shog 
from out this the night to be King ! 

"Saints! but there's a dog beyant the bark!" he 
cried a minute after, as the pup crept over to him and 
began to be friendly, — "I wonder is a mon sinsible 
to go to trustin' the loight o' any moon that shines full 
on a pitch-black noight whin 'tis rainin' ? Och hone ! 
but me stomach's that empty, gin I don't put on me 
shoes me lungs'll lake trou the soles o' me fate, and gin 
I do, me shoes they're that sopped, I'll cough them up — 
o-whurra-r-a ! whurra-a ! but will I iver see Old Oire- 
land agin, — I don't know !" 

Bart shut off the light, slipped on his shoes, and draw- 
ing a coat over his pajamas lighted the oil stable lan- 
tern, hung it with its back toward me, on a long hook 
that reached down from one of the rafters, and bore 
down upon Larry, whose face was instantly wreathed 



176 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

in puckered smiles at the sight of a fellow-human 
who, though big, evidently had no intention of being 
aggressive. 

"Well, Larry McManus," said Bart, cheerfully, 
"how came you in this barn so far away from Oireland 
a night like this?" 

"Seein' as yer another gintleman o' the road in the 
same ploice, what more loike than the misfortune's the 
same?" replied he, lengthening his lower lip and 
stretching his stubby chin, which he scratched cau- 
tiously. Then, as he raised his eyes to Bart's, he 
evidently read something in his general air, touselled 
and tanned as he was, that shifted his opinion at least 
one notch. 

"Maybe, sor, you're an actor mon, sor, that didn't 
suit the folks in the town beyant, sor, but I'd take it as 
praise, so I would, for shure they're but pigs there, — 
I couldn't stop wid thim meself ! Thin agin, mayhap 
yer jest a plain gintleman, a bit belated, as it were, 
— a little belated on the way home, sor, — loike me, sor, 
that wus moinded to be in Kildare, sor, come May-day, 
and blessed Peter's day's nigh come about an' I'm 
here yit !" 

"You are getting on the right scent, Larry," said Bart, 
struggling with laughter, and yet, as he said after, not 



A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE 177 

wishing possibly to huff this curious person. "I hope 
I'm a gentleman, but I'm not tramping about; this is 
my barn, in which my wife and I are sleeping, so if I 
were you, I wouldn't take off that shirt until I can find 
you a dry one!" 

The change that came over the man was comical. 
In a lightning flash he had fastened the few buttons 
in his blouse that it had taken his fumbling fingers 
several moments to unloose, and dropping one hand to 
his side, he held it there rigid as he saluted with two 
fingers at the brim of an imaginary hat ; while his roving 
eye quickly took in the various motley articles of fur- 
niture of our camp, — a small kitchen table with oil- 
stove and tea outfit of plain white ware, some plates and 
bowls, a few saucepans, half a dozen chairs, no two 
alike, and the two cots huddled in the shadows, — his 
voice, that had been pitched in a confidential key, arose 
to a wail : — 

"The Saints luv yer honor, but do they be afther havin' 
bad landlords in Meriky too, that evicted yer honor from 
yer house, sor ? I thought here nigh every poor body 
owned their own bit, ground and roof, sor, let alone a foine 
man loike yerself that shows the breedin' down to his 
tin toes, sor. Oi feel fer yer honor, fer there wuz I 
meself set out wid pig and cow both, sor (for thim bein' 



178 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

given Kathy by her aunt fer her fortin could not be took), 
six years ago Patrick's tide, sor, and hadn't she married 
Mulqueen that same week, sor (he bein' gardener a long 
time to his Riverence over in England, sor, and meetin' 
Kathy only at his mother's wakin'), I'd maybe been 
lodged in a barn meself, sor! Sure, hev ye the cow 
below ud let me down a drap o' milk?" 

Then did Bart laugh long and heartily, for this new 
point of view in regard to our doings amused him im- 
mensely. Of all the local motives attributed to our 
garden vacation, none had been quite so nai've and 
unexpected as this ! 

"But we haven't been evicted," said Bart, uncon- 
sciously beginning to apologize to an unknown straggler. 
"I own this place and my home is yonder; we are 
camping here for our health and pleasure. Come, 
it's time you gave an account of yourself, as you are tres- 
passing." That the situation suddenly began to annoy 
Bart was plain. 

Ignoring the tail of the speech, Larry saluted anew : 
"Sure, sor, I knew ye at first fer gintleman and leddy, 
which this same last proves; a rale gintleman and his 
leddy can cut about doin' the loikes of which poor folks 
ud be damned fer ! I mind well how Lord Kilmartin 's 
youngest — she wid the wild red hair an' eyes that wud 



A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE 179 

shame a doe — used to go barefoot through the dew 
down to Biddie Macks's cabin to drink fresh buttermilk, 
whin they turned gallons o' it from their own dairy. 
Some said, underbreath, she was touched, and some wild 
loike, but none spoke loud but to wish her speed, fer 
that's what it is to be a leddy ! 

"Meself, is it? Och, it's soon told. Six years lived 
I there wid Kathy and Mulqueen, workin' in the garden, 
he keepin' before me, until one day his Riverence come 
face agin me thruble. Oh, yis, sor, that same, that bit 
sup that's too much for the stomick, sor, and so gets into 
the toes and tongue, sor ! Four times a year the spell's 
put on me, sor, and gin I shlape it over, I'm a good man 
in between, sor, but that one time, sor, Mulqueen was sint 
to Lunnon, sor, and I missed me shlape fer mischief. 

"Well, thinks I, I'll go to Meriky and see me Johnny, 
me youngest; most loike they're more used to the 
shlapin' spells out there where all is free; but they 
wasn't ! Johnny's a sheriff and got money wid his 
woman, and she's no place in her house fit fer the old 
man resting the drap off. So he gives me money 
to go home first class, and says he'll sind another bit 
along to Kathy fer me keepin'. 

"This was come Easter, and bad cess, one o' me 
shlapes was due, and so I've footed it to get a job to 



180 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

take me back to Kathy. If I could strike a port just 
right, Hiven might get me home between times in a 
cattle boat. 

"I'm that well risted now I could do good work if I 
had full feed, maybe till Michaelmas. Hiven rest ye, 
sor, but have ye ever a job o' garden work now on yer 
estate, sor, that would kape me until I got the bit to 
cross to Kathy?" 

As Bart hesitated, I burst forth, "Have you ever 
tended flowers, Larry?" 

" Flowers, me leddy ? — that's what I did fer his River- 
ence, indoors and out, and dressed them fer the shows, 
mem, and not few's the prize money we took. His River- 
ence, he called a rose for Kathy, that is to say Kathleen ; 
'twas that big 'twould hide yer face. Flowers, is it? 
WeU, I don't know!" 

Bart, meanwhile, had made a plan, telling Larry that 
he would draw a cup of tea and give him something to 
eat, while he thought the matter over. He soon had 
the poor fellow wrapped in an old blanket and snoring 
comfortably in the straw, while, as the rain had stopped 
and dawn began to show the outlines of Opal Farm, 
Bart suggested that I had best go indoors and finish 
my broken sleep, while he had a chance to scrutinize 
Larry by daylight before committing himself. 



A MIDNIGHT ADVENTURE 181 

When he rejoined me several hours later for an indoor 
breakfast, for it had turned to rain again and promised 
several days of the saturate weather that makes even 
a mountain camp utterly dreary, he brought me the 
news that Larry was to work for me especially, beginning 
on the rose bed, — that he would lodge with Amos 
Opie and take his meals with Anastasia, who thinks it 
likely that they are cousins on the mothers' side, as they 
are both of the same parish and name. The exact 
way of our meeting with him need not be dwelt upon 
domestically, for the sake of discipline, as he will have 
more self-respect among his fellows in the combination 
clothes we provided, "until his baggage arrives." He 
is to be paid no money, and allowed to " shlape" if a 
spell unhappily arrives. When the season is over, Bart 
agrees to see him on board ship with a prepaid passage 
straight to Kathy, and whatever else is his due sent to 
her ! Meanwhile he promised to " fit the leddy with the 
tastiest garden off the old sod!" 

So here we are ! 

This chronicle should have a penny-dreadful title, 
" Their Midnight Adventure, or How it Rained a Rose 
Gardener!" Tell me about the ferns next time; we 
have only moved the glossy Christmas and evergreen- 
crested wood ferns as yet, being sure of these. 



182 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

How about our fencing? Ask Evan. You remember 
that we have a picket-fence toward the road, but on three 
sides the boundary is only a tumble-down stone wall in 
which bird cherries have here and there found footing. 
We have a chance to sell the stones, and Bart is thinking 
of it, as it will be too costly to rebuild on a good founda- 
tion. The old wall was merely a rough- laid pile. 



IX 

FERNS, FENCES, AND WHITE BIRCHES 

(Barbara Campbell to Mary Penrose) 

Hemlock Hills, July 3. For nearly a week we 
have been sauntering through this most entrancing hill 
country, practically a pedestrian trip, except that the 
feet that have taken the steps have been shod with steel 
instead of leather. Your last chronicle has followed 
me, and was read in a region so pervaded by ferns that 
your questions concerning their transplanting would 
have answered themselves if you could have only perched 
on the rock beside me. There is a fern-lined ravine be- 
low, a fern-bordered road in front ; and above a log cot- 
tage, set in a clearing in the hemlocks which has for its 
boundaries the tumble-down fence piled by the settlers 
a century or two ago, its crevices now filled by leaf- 
mould, has become at once a natural fernery and a 
barrier. Why do you not use your old wall in a like 
manner? Of course your stones may be too closely 
piled and lack the time-gathered leaf-mould, but a little 
discretion in removing or tipping a stone here and 

183 



184 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

there, and a crowbar for making pockets, would work 
wonders. You might even exchange the surplus rocks 
for leaf-mould, load by load ; at any rate large quantities 
of fern soil must be obtainable for the carting at the 
reservoir woods. 

Imagine the effect, if you please, of that irregular 
line of rocks swathed in vines and sheltering great clumps 
of ferns, while it will afford an endless shelter for every 
sort of wild thing that you may pick up in your rambles. 
Of course you need not plant it all at once, but having 
made the plan, develop it at leisure. 

You should never quite finish a country place unless 
you expect to leave it. The something more in garden 
life is the bale of hay before the horse's nose on the up- 
hill road. Last year, for almost a week, we thought 
our garden quite as finished as the material and sur- 
roundings would allow, — it was a strange, dismal, hollow 
sort of feeling. However, it was soon displaced by the 
desire that I have to collect my best roses in one spot, 
add to them, and • gradually form a rosary where the 
Garden Queen and all her family may have the best of 
air, food, and lodgings. You see I feared that the knoll, 
hardy beds, and rose garden were not sufficient food for 
your mind to ruminate, so I add the fern fence as a sort 
of dessert ! 




"An endless shelter for every sort of wild thing." 



FERNS, FENCES, AND WHITE BIRCHES 185 

"Where is the shade that ferns need?" I hear you 
ask, "for except under some old apple trees and where 
the bird cherries grow (and they, though beautiful at 
blooming time and leaf fall, attract tent caterpillars), 
the stone wall lies in the sun !" 

Yes, but in one of the woodland homes of this region 
I have seen a screen placed by such a rustic stone fence 
that it not only served the purpose of giving light shade, 
but was a thing of beauty in itself, dividing the vista 
into many landscapes, the frame being long or upright 
according to the planter's fancy. 

Do you remember the old saying "When away keep 
open thine eyes, and so pack thy trunk for the home- 
going?" 

On this drive of ours I've been cramming my trunk 
to overflowing, and yet the ideas are often the simplest 
possible, for the people of this region, with more inven- 
tive art than money, have the perfect gift of adapting 
that which lies nearest to hand. 

You spoke in your last chronicle of the screen of white 
birches through which you saw the sun rise over the 
meadows of Opal Farm. This birch springs up in waste 
lands almost everywhere. We have it in abundance 
in the wood lot on the side of our hill, and it is scattered 
through the wet woods below our wild walk, showing 
that all it needs is a foothold. 



186 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

Because it is common and the wood rather weak and 
soft, landscape gardening has rather passed it by, 
turning a cold shoulder, yet the slender tree is very 
beautiful. True, it has not the length of life, the girth 
and strength of limb, of the silver-barked canoe birch, 
but the white birch will grow in a climate that fevers 
its northern cousin. In spite of its delicate qualities, 
it is not a trivial tree, for I have seen it with a bole of 
more than forty feet in length, measuring eighteen 
inches through at the ground. When you set it, you 
are not planting for posterity, perhaps, but will gain a 
speedy result ; and the fertility of the tree, when once 
established, will take care of the future. 

What is more charming after a summer shower than 
a natural cluster of these picturesque birches, as they 
often chance to group themselves in threes, like the 
Graces — the soft white of the trunks, with dark hiero- 
glyphic shadows here and there disappearing in a drap- 
ery of glossy leaves, green above and reflecting the bark 
colour underneath, all a-quiver and more like live things 
poised upon the russet twigs than delicate pointed leaves ! 
Then, when the autumn comes, how they stand out in 
company with cedar bushes and sheep laurel on the hill- 
sides to make beautiful the winter garden, and we stand 
in mute admiration when these white birches reach from 



FERNS, FENCES, AND WHITE BIRCHES 187 

a snowbank and pencil their frosty tracery against a wall 
of hemlocks. 

This is the simple material that has been used with 
such wonderful effect. In the gardens hereabout they 
have flanked their alleys with the birches, for even when 
fully grown their habit is more poplar-like than spread- 
ing, and many plants, like lilies, requiring partial shade 
flourish under them ; while for fences and screens the 
trees are planted in small groups, with either stones and 
ferns, or shrubs set thick between, and the most beauti- 
ful winter fence that Evan says he has ever seen in all his 
wanderings amid costly beauty was when, last winter, in 
being here to measure for some plans, he came sud- 
denly upon an informal boundary and screen combined, 
over fifty feet in length, made of white birches, — the 
groups of twos and threes set eight or ten feet apart, the 
gaps being filled by Japanese barberries laden with their 
scarlet fruit. Even now this same screen is beautiful 
enough with its shaded greens, while the barberries 
in their blooming time, and the crimson leaf glow of 
autumn, give it four distinct seasons. 

The branches of the white birch being small and 
thickly set, they may be trimmed at will, and windows 
thus opened here and there without the look of artifice 
or stiffness. 



188 THE Gx\RDEN, YOU, AND I 

Fences are always a moot question to the gardener, 
for if she has a pleasant neighbour, she does not like to 
raise an aggressive barrier or perhaps cut off the view, 
yet to a certain extent I like being walled in at least on 
two sides. A total lack of boundaries is too impersonal, 
— the eye travels on and on ; there is nothing to rest it 
by comparison. Also, where there are no fences or 
hedges, — and what are hedges but living fences, — there is 
nothing to break the ground draught in winter and early 
springtime. The ocean is much more beautiful and 
full of meaning when brought in contact with a 
slender bit of coast. The moon has far more majesty 
when but distancing the tree-tops than when rolling 
apparently at random through an empty sky. A vast 
estate may well boast of wide sweeps and open places, 
but the same effect is not gained, present fashion to the 
contrary, by throwing down the barriers between a dozen 
homes occupying only half as many acres. Preferable 
is the cosey English walled villa of the middle class, even 
though it be a bit stuffy and suggestive of earwigs. 
The question should not be to fence or not to fence, but 
rather how to fence usefully and artistically, and any one 
who has an old stone wall, such as you have, moss grown 
and tumble-down, with the beginnings of wildness al- 
ready achieved, has no excuse for failure. We have 



FERNS, FENCES, AND WHITE BIRCHES 189 

seen other fences here where bushes, wire, and vines 
all take part, but they cannot compete with an old wall. 

With ferns, a topic opens as long and broad and deep 
as the glen below us, and of almost as uncertain climb- 
ing, for it is not so much what ferns may be dug up and, 
as individual plants, continue to grow in new surround- 
ings, but how much of their haunt may be transplanted 
with them, that the fern may keep its characteristics. 
Many people do not think of this, nor would they care 
if reminded. Water lilies, floating among their pads 
in the still margin of a stream, with jewelled dragon- 
flies darting over, soft clouds above and the odour of 
wild grapes or swamp azalea wafting from the banks, 
are no more to them than half a dozen such lilies grown 
in a sunken tub or whitewashed basin in a backyard ; 
rather are they less desirable because less easily con- 
trolled and encompassed. Such people, and they are 
not a few, belong to the tribe of Peter Bell, who saw noth- 
ing more in the primrose by the river's brim than that it 
was a primrose, and consequently yellow. Doubtless 
it would have looked precisely the same to him, or even 
more yellow, if it had bloomed in a tin can ! 

We do not treat our native ferns with sufficient respect. 
Homage is paid in literature to the palm, and it is an 
emblem of honour, but our New England ferns, many 



i 9 o THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

of them equally majestic, are tossed into heaps for hay 
and mown down by the ruthless scythe of the farmer 
every autumn when he shows his greatest agricultural 
energy by stripping the waysides of their beauty prior 
to the coming of the roadmender with his awful "turn- 
piking" process. If, by the way, the automobilists suc- 
ceed in stopping this piking practice, we will print a nice 
little prayer for them and send it to Saint Peter, so that, 
though it won't help them in this world, — that would 
be dangerous, — it will by and by ! 

In the woods the farmer allows the ferns to stand, for 
are they not one of the usual attributes of a picnic? 
Stuck in the horses' bridle, they keep off flies; they 
serve to deck the tablecloth upon which the food is 
spread ; gathered in armfuls,they somewhat ease the con- 
tact of the rheumatic with the rocks, upon which they 
must often sit on such occasions. They provide the 
young folks with a motive to seek something further in 
the woods, and give the acquisitive ladies who "press 
things" much loot to take home, and all without cost. 

This may not be respectful treatment, but it is not 
martyrdom ; the fern is a generous plant, a thing of wiry 
root-stock and prehistoric tenacity ; it has not forgotten 
that tree ferns are among its ancestors ; when it is dis- 
couraged, it rests and grows again. But imagine the 



FERNS, FENCES, AND WHITE BIRCHES 191 

feelings of a mat of exquisite maidenhair rent from a 
shady slope with moss and partridge vine at its feet, and 
quivering elusive woodland shade above, on finding itself 
unceremoniously crowded into a bed, between cannas or 
red geraniums ! Or fancy the despair of either of the 
wide- spreading Osmundas, lovers of stream borders 
opulent with leaf-mould, or wood hollows deep with 
moist richness, on rinding themselves ranged in a row 
about the porch of a summer cottage, each one tied firmly 
to a stake like so many green parasols stuck in the dry 
loam point downward ! 

It is not so much a question of how many species of 
native ferns can be domesticated, for given sufficient 
time and patience all things are possible, but how many 
varieties are either decorative, interesting, or useful 
away from their native haunts. For any one taking 
what may be called a botanical interest in ferns, a semi- 
artificial rockery, with one end in wet ground and the 
other reaching dry-wood conditions, is extremely inter- 
esting. In such a place, by obtaining some of the earth 
with each specimen and tagging it carefully, an out-of- 
door herbarium may be formed and something added 
to it every time an excursion is made into a new region. 
Otherwise the ferns that are worth the trouble of trans- 
planting and supplying with soil akin to that from which 



i 9 2 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

they came, are comparatively few. Of decorative 
species the Osmundas easily lead; being natives of 
swampy or at least moist ground, they should have a 
like situation, and yet so strong are their roots and crown 
of leaves that they will flourish for years after the 
moisture that has fed them has been drained and the 
shading overgrowth cut away, even though dwarfed 
in growth and coarsened in texture. Thus people seeing 
them growing under these conditions in open fields and 
roadside banks mistake their necessities. 

The Royal fern {Osmunda regalis) positively demands 
moisture; it will waive the matter of shade in a great 
degree, but water it must have. 

The Cinnamon fern, that encloses the spongelike, 
brown, fertile fronds in the circle of green ones, gains its 
greatest size of five feet in roadside runnels or in 
springy places between boulders in the river woods ; yet 
so accommodating is it that you can use it at the base of 
your knoll if a convenient rock promises both reasonable 
dampness and shelter. 

The third of the family {Osmunda Claytonia) is known 
as the Interrupted fern, because in May the fertile black 
leaflets appear in the middle of the fronds and inter- 
rupt the even greenness. This fern will thrive in merely 
moist soil and is very charming early in the season, but 



FERNS, FENCES, AND WHITE BIRCHES 193 

like the other two, out of its haunts, cannot be relied 
upon after August. 

As a fern for deep soil, where walking room can be 
allowed it, the common brake, or bracken (Pteris aqui- 
lina) is unsurpassed. It will grow either in sandy 
woods or moist, and should have a certain amount of 
high shade, else its broad fronds, held high above the 
ground umbrella-wise, will curl, grow coarse, and lose 
the fernlike quality altogether. You can plant this 
safely in the bit of old orchard that you are giving over 
to wild asters, black-eyed Susan, and sundrops, but 
mind you, be sure to take both Larry and Barney, 
together with a long post-hole spade, when you go out 
to dig brakes, — they are not things of shallow super- 
ficial roots, I can assure you. 

A few years ago Evan, Timothy Saunders, and I went 
brake-hunting, I selecting the groups and the menkind 
digging great solid turfs a foot or more in depth, in 
order to be sure the things had native earth enough along 
to mother them into comfortable growth. Proudly 
we loaded the big box wagon, for we had taken so much 
black peat (as the soil happened to be) that not a root 
hung below and success was certain. 

When, on reaching home, in unloading, one turf fell 
from the cart and crumbled into fragments, to my 



i 9 4 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

dismay I found that the long, tough stalk ran quite 
through the clod and we had no roots at all, but that 
(if inanimate things can laugh) they were all laughing 
at us back in the meadow and probably another foot 
underground. Yet brakes are well worth the trouble 
of deep digging, for if once established, a waste bit, 
where little else will flourish, is given a graceful under- 
growth that is able to stand erect even though the breeze 
plays with the little forest as it does with a field of grain. 
Then, too, the brake patch is a treasury to be drawn 
from when arranging tall flowers like foxgloves, lark- 
spurs, hollyhocks, and others that have little foliage of 
their own. 

The fact that the brake does not mature its seeds that 
lie under the leaf margin until late summer also insures 
it a long season of sightliness, and when ripeness 
finally draws nigh, it comes in a series of beautiful 
mellow shades, varying from straw through deep gold 
to russet, such as the beech tree chooses for its autumn 
cloak. 

Another plant there is, a low-growing shrub, having 
long leaves with scalloped edges, giving a spicy odour 
when crushed or after rain, that I must beg you to 
plant with these brakes. It is called Sweet-fern, merely 
by courtesy, from its fernlike appearance, for it is of 



FERNS, FENCES, AND WHITE BIRCHES 195 

the bayberry family and first cousin to sweet gale and 
waxberry. 

The digging of this also is a process quite as elusive 
as mining for brakes; but when once it sets foot in 
your orchard, and it will enjoy the drier places, you 
will have a liberal annex to your bed of sweet odours, 
and it may worthily join lemon balm, mignonette, 
southernwood, and lavender in the house, though in 
the garden it would be rather too pushing a com- 
panion. 

Next, both decorative and useful, comes the Silvery 
Spleenwort, that is content with shade and good soil of 
any sort, so long as it is not rank with manure. It has 
a slender creeping root, but when it once takes hold, it 
flourishes mightily and after a year or so will wave 
silver- lined fronds three feet long proudly before you, a 
rival of Osmunda ! 

A sister spleenwort is the beautiful Lady fern, whose 
lacelike fronds have party-coloured stems, varying 
from straw through pink and reddish to brown, giving 
an unusual touch of life and warmth to one of the cool 
green fern tribe. In autumn the entire leaf of this fern, 
in dying, oftentimes takes these same hues ; it is decora- 
tive when growing and useful to blend with cut flowers. 
It naturally prefers woods, but will settle down comfort- 



196 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

ably in the angle of a house or under a fence, and will 
be a standby in your wall rockery. 

The ferns that seem really to prefer the open, one 
taking to dry and two to moist ground, are the hay- 
scented fem {Dicksonia punctilobula), the New 
York fem (Dryopteris Noveboracencis), and the Marsh 
Shield-fern. Dicksonia has a pretty leaf of fretwork, 
and will grow three feet in length, though it is usually 
much shorter. It is the fern universal here with us, 
it makes great swales running out from wood edges to 
pastures, and it rivals the bayberry in covering hillsides ; 
it will grow in dense beds under tall laurels or rhododen- 
drons, border your wild walk, or make a setting of cheer- 
ful light green to the stone wall ; while if cut for house 
decoration, it keeps in condition for several days and 
almost rivals the Maidenhair as a combination with 
sweet peas or roses. 

The New York fern, when of low stature, is one of the 
many bits of growing carpet of rich cool woods. If it 
is grown in deep shade, the leaves become too long and 
spindling for beauty. When in moist ground, quite in 
the open, or in reflected shade, the fresh young leaves 
of a foot and under add great variety to the grass and are 
a perfect setting for table decorations of small flowers. 
We have these ferns all through the dell. If they are 



FERNS, FENCES, AND WHITE BIRCHES 197 

mown down in June, July sees a fresh crop, and their 
spring green is held perpetual until frost. 

The Marsh Shield-fern of gentian meadows is the per- 
fect small fern for a bit of wet ground, and is the green 
to be used with all wild flowers of like places. One day 
last autumn I had a bouquet of grass-of-Parnassus, 
ladies' tresses, and gentian massed thickly with these 
ferns, and the posey lived for days on the sunny 
window shelf of the den (for gentians close their eyes 
in shade), — a bit of the September marshland 
brought indoors. 

The two Beech- ferns, the long and the broad, you may 
grow on the knoll; give the long the dampest spots, 
and place the broad where it is quite dry. As the root- 
stocks of both these are somewhat frail, I would advise 
you to peg them down with hairpins and cover well with 
earth. By the way, I always use wire hairpins to hold 
down creeping rootstocks of every kind ; it keeps them 
from springing up and drying before the rootlets have 
a chance to grasp the soil. 

The roots of Maidenhair should always be treated in 
this way, as they dry out very quickly. This most 
distinctive of our New England ferns will grow between 
the rocks of your knoll, as well as in deep nooks in the 
fence. It seems to love rich side-hill woods and craves 



i 9 8 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

a rock behind its back, and if you are only careful about 
the soil, you can have miniature forests of it with little 
trouble. As for maidenhair, all its uses are beauty ! 

Give me a bouquet of perfect wild rosebuds within 
a deep fringe of maidenhair to set in a crystal jar where 
I may watch the deep pink petals unfold and show the 
golden stars within ; let me breathe their first breath 
of perfume, and you may keep all the greenhouse 
orchids that are grown. 

Though you can have a variety of ferns in other loca- 
tions, those that will thrive best on the knoll and keep 
it ever green and in touch with laurel and hemlock, 
are but five, — the Christmas fern, the Marginal Shield- 
fern, the common Rock Polypody, the Ebony Spleenwort, 
and the Spinulose Wood-fern. Of the first pair it is 
impossible to have too many. The Christmas fern, 
with its glistening leaves of holly green, has a stout, creep- 
ing rootstock, which must be firmly secured, a few stones 
being added temporarily to the hairpins to give weight. 
The Evergreen Wood-fern and Ebony Spleenwort, having 
short rootstocks, can be tucked into sufficiently deep holes 
between rocks or in the hollows left by small decayed 
stumps, while the transplanting of the Rock Polypody 
is an act where luck, recklessness, and a pinch of magic 
must all be combined. 



FERNS, FENCES, AND WHITE BIRCHES 199 

You will find vast mats of these leathery little Poly- 
podys growing with rock-selaginella on the great bould- 
ers of the river woods. As these are to be split up for 
masonry, the experiment of transferring the polypody is 
no sin, though it savours somewhat of the process of 
skin-grafting. Evan and I have tried the experiment 
successfully, so that it is no fable. We had a bit of 
shady bank at home that proved by the mosses that 
grew on it that it was moistened from beneath the 
year through. The protecting shade was of tall 
hickories, and a rock ledge some twenty feet high 
shielded it from the south and east. We scraped 
the moss from a circle of about six feet and loosened 
the surface of the earth only, and very carefully. 
Then we spread some moist leaf-mould on the 
rough but flat surface of a partly exposed rock. Going 
to a near-by bit of woods that was being despoiled, as in 
your valley, we chose two great mats of polypody and 
moss that had no piercing twigs to break the fabric, 
and carefully peeled them from the rocks, as you would 
bark from a tree, the matted rootstocks weaving all 
together. Moistening these thoroughly, we wrapped 
them in a horse blanket and hurried home. The earth 
and rock already prepared were sprinkled with water 
and the fern fabric applied and gently but firmly pressed 



200 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

down, that resting on the earth being held by the ever 
useful hairpin ! 

The rock graft was more difficult, but after many- 
failures by way of stones that rolled off, a coarse network 
of cords was put across and fastened to whatever twigs 
or roots came in the way. Naturally a period of con- 
stant sprinkling followed, and for that season the rock 
graft seemed decidedly homesick, but the next spring 
resignation had set in, and two years later the poly- 
podys had completely adopted the new location and were 
prepared to appropriate the whole of it. 

So you see that there are comparatively only a few 
ferns, after all, that are of great value to The Garden, 
You, and I, and likewise there are but a few rules for 
their transplanting, viz.: — 

Don't bother about the tops, for new ones will 
grow, but look to the roots, and do not let them be 
exposed to the air or become dry in travel. Examine 
the quality of soil from which you have taken the ferns, 
and if you have none like it nearer home, take some 
with you for a starter! Never dig up more on one 
day than you can plant during the next, and above all 
remember that if a fern is worth tramping the country- 
side for, it is worth careful planting, and that the moral 
remarks made about the care in setting out of roses 



FERNS, FENCES, AND WHITE BIRCHES 201 

apply with double force to the handling of delicate 
wild flowers and ferns. 

Good luck to your knoll, Mary Penrose, and to your 
fern fence, if that fancy pleases you. May the magic 
of fern seed fill your eyes and let you see visions, the 
goodly things of heart's desire, when, all being accom- 
plished, you pause and look at the work of your hands. 

"And nimble fay and pranksome elf 
Flash vaguely past at every turn, 
Or, weird and wee, sits Puck himself, 
With legs akimbo, on a fern !" 



X 



FRANKNESS, — GARDENING AND 
OTHERWISE 

(Mary Penrose to Barbara Campbell) 

July 15. — Midsummer Night. Since the month 
came in, vacation time has been suspended, insomuch 
that Bart goes to the office every day, Saturdays ex- 
cepted ; but we have not returned to our indoor bed- 
room. Once it seemed the definition of airy coolness, 
with its three wide windows, white matting, and muslin 
draperies, but now — I fully understand the relative 
feelings of a bird in a cage and a bird in the open. 
The air blows through the bars and the sun shines 
through them, but it is still a cage. 

In these warm, still nights we take down the slat 
screens that hang between the hand-hewn chestnut 
beams of the old barn, and with the open rafters of what 
was a hay-loft above us, we look out of the door-frame 
straight up at the stars and sometimes drag our cots out 
on the wide bank that tops the wall, overlooking the 
Opal Farm, and sleep wholly under the sky. 



FRANKNESS AND GARDENING 203 

These two weeks past we have had the Infant with 
us at night, clad in a light woollen monkey- suit nighty 
with feet, her crib being, however, under cover. Her 
open-eyed wonder has been a new phase of the vaca- 
tion. Knowing no fear, she has begun to develop a feel- 
ing of kinship with all the small animals, not only of 
the barn but dwellers on Opal Farm as well, and when 
she discovered a nest of small mice in an old tool- box 
under the eaves and proposed to take them, in their 
improvised house, to her very own room at the opposite 
end, this " room " being a square marked around her bed 
by small flower-pots, set upside down, I protested, as a 
matter of course, saying that mice were not things to 
handle, and besides they would die without their mother. 

The Infant, still clutching the box, looked at me in 
round-eyed wonder: "I had Dinah and the kittens 
to play with in the nursery, didn't I, mother?" 

"Certainly!" 

"And when Ann-stasia brought them up in her ap'n, 
Dinah walked behind, didn't she?" 

"Yes, I think so!" 

" Ver-r-y well, the mouse mother will walk behind too, 
and I love mice better'n cats, for they have nicer hands ; 
'sides, mother, don't you know who mice really and 
truly are, and why they have to hide away? They 



204 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

are the horses that fairlies drive, and I'm going to have 
these for the fairlies in my village!" making a sweep 
of her arm toward the encampment of flower-pots; 
"if you want fairlies to stay close beside your bed, you 
must give them horses to drive, 'cause when it gets cold 
weather cobwebs gets too sharp for them to ride on 
and there isn't always fireflies 'n candle worms to show 
'em the way, — 'n it's true, 'cause Larry says so!" 
she added, probably seeing the look of incredulity on 
my face. 

"Larry knows fairlies and they're really trulies; 
if you're bad to them, you'll see the road and it won't 
be there, and so you'll get into Hen'sy's bog ! Larry 
did, — and if you make houses for them like mine 
(pointing to the flower-pots) and give 'em drinks of 
milk and flower wine, they'll bring you lots of 
childrens ! They did to Larry, so I'm trying to please 
'em wif my houses, so's to have some to play wif !" 

Larry's harmless folklore (for when he is quite him- 
self, as he is in these days, he has a certain refinement 
and an endless fund of marvellous legends and stories), 
birds and little beasts for friends, dolls cut from paper 
with pansies fastened on for faces, morning-glories for 
cups in which to give the fairies drink, what could make 
a more blissful childhood for our little maid ? That is 



FRANKNESS AND GARDENING 205 

the everlasting pity of a city childhood. Creature com- 
forts may be had and human friends, but where is the 
vista that reaches under the trees and through the long 
meadow-grass where the red-gold lily bells tinkle, up 
the brook bed to the great flat mossy rock, beneath 
which is the door to fairyland, the spotted turtle being 
warder. Fairyland, the country of eternal youth and 
possibility ! 

I wouldn't give up the fairies that I once knew and 
peopled the solemn woods with down in grandfather's 
Virginia home for a fortune, and even now, any day, 
I can put my ear to the earth, like Tommy-Anne, and 
hear the grass grow. It occurred to me yesterday that 
the Infant, in age, temperament, and heredity, is suited 
to be a companion for your Richard. Could you not 
bring him down with you before the summer is over? 
Though, as the unlike sometimes agree best, Ian and she 
might be more compatible, so bring them both and we 
will turn the trio loose in the meadows of Opal Farm 
with a mite of a Shetland pony that The Man from 
Everywhere has recently bestowed upon the Infant — 
crazy, extravagant man ! What we shall do with it in 
winter I do not know, as we cannot yet run into the ex- 
pense of keeping such live stock. But why bother? 
it is only midsummer now, grazing is plentiful and seems 



206 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

to suit the needs of this spunky little beast, and the In- 
fant riding him "across country," as Bart calls her wan- 
derings about Opal Farm, is a spectacle too pretty to 
be denied us. Yes, I know I'm silly, and that you have 
the twins to rhapsodize about, but girls are so much 
more picturesque in the clothes ! What ! thought she 
wore gingham bloomers ! Yes, but not all the time, for 
Maria will frill her up and run her with ribbons of 
afternoons ! 

Back to the house and garden ! I'm wandering, but 
then I'm Lady Lazy this summer, as The Man from 
Everywhere calls me, and naturally a bit inconsequent ! 
As I said, Bart is at the office daily, and will be for 
another week, but Lady Lazy has not returned to what 
Maria Maxwell calls "The Tyranny of the Three 
M's," — the mending basket, the market book, and the 
money-box ! I was willing, quite willing ; in fact it is 
only fair that Maria should have her time of irresponsi- 
bility, for I know that she has half a dozen invitations 
to go to pleasant places and meet people, one being from 
Lavinia Cortright to visit her shore cottage. I'm always 
hoping that Maria may meet the "right man" some 
summer day, but that she surely will never do if she stays 
here. 



FRANKNESS AND GARDENING 207 

"I've everything systematized, and it's easier for me 
to go on than drop the needles for a fortnight or so and 
then find, on coming back, that you have been knitting 
a mitten when I had started the frame of a sock," 
Maria said, laughing; "make flower hay while the crop 
is to be had for the gathering, my lady ! Another year 
you may not have such free hands !" 

Then my protests grew weaker and weaker, for 
the establishment had thriven marvellously well with- 
out my daily interference. The jam closet shows 
rows of everything that might be made of strawberries, 
cherries, currants, and raspberries, and it suddenly 
struck me that possibly if domestic machinery is set 
going on a consistent basis, whether it is not a mistake 
to do too much oiling and tightening of a screw here 
and there, unless distinct symptoms of a halt render it 
absolutely necessary. 

"Very well," I said, with a show of spunk, "give me 
one single task, that I may not feel as if I had no part 
in the homemaking. Something as ornamental and 
frivolous as you choose, but that shall occupy me at 
least two hours a day!" 

Maria paused a moment; we were then standing in 
front of the fireplace, where a jar of bayberry 
filled the place of logs between the andirons. First, 



208 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

casting her eyes through the doors of dining room, living 
room, and den, she fixed them on me with rather a mis- 
chievous twinkle, as she said, "You shall gather and 
arrange the flowers for the house ; and always have plenty 
of them, but never a withered or dropsical blossom 
among them all. You shall also invent new ways for 
arranging them, new combinations, new effects, the only 
restriction being that you shall not put vases where the 
water will drip on books, or make the house look 
like the show window of a wholesale florist. I will give 
you a fresh mop, and you can have the back porch and 
table for your workshop, and if I'm not mistaken, you 
will find two hours a day little enough for the work!" 
she added with very much the air of some one engag- 
ing a new housemaid and presenting her with a 
broom ! 

It has never taken me two hours to gather and ar- 
range the flowers, and though of course we are only 
beginning to have much of a garden, we've always had 
flowers in the house, — quantities of sweet peas and such 
things, besides wild flowers. I began to protest, an injured 
feeling rising in my throat, that she, Maria Maxwell, 
music teacher, city bound for ten years, should think to 
instruct me of recent outdoor experience. 

"Yes, you've always had flowers, but did you pick 



FRANKNESS AND GARDENING 209 

the sweet peas or did Barney ? Did you cram them hap- 
hazard into the first thing that came handy (probably 
that awful bowl decorated in ten discordant colours 
and evidently a wedding present, for such atrocities 
never find any other medium of circulation) ? Or did 
you separate them nicely, and arrange the pink and sal- 
mon peas with the lavender in that plain-coloured 
Sevres vase that is unusually accommodating in the 
matter of water, then putting the gay colours in the blue- 
and- white Delft bowl and the duller ones in cut glass to 
give them life? Having plenty, did you change them 
every other day, or the moment the water began to look 
milky, or did you leave them until the flowers clung to- 
gether in the first stages of mould ? Meanwhile, the un- 
gathered flowers on the vines were seriously developing 
peas and shortening their stems to be better able to bear 
their weight. And, Mary Penrose," — here Maria 
positively glared at me as if I had been a primary pupil 
in the most undesirable school of her route who was both 
stone deaf and afflicted with catarrh, "did you wash out 
your jars and vases with a mop every time you changed 
the flowers, and wipe them on a towel separate from 
the ones used for the pantry glass ? No, you never did ! 
You tipped the water out over there at the end of the 
piazza by the honeysuckles, because you couldn't quite 



2io THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

bring yourself to pouring it down the pantry sink, 
refilled the vases, and that was all!" 

In spite of a certain sense of annoyance that I felt 
at the way in which Maria was giving me a lecture, and 
somehow when a person has taught for ten years she 
(particularly she) inevitably acquires a rather unpleas- 
ant way of imparting the truth that makes one wish to 
deny it, I stood convicted in my own eyes as well as in 
Maria's. It had so often happened that when either 
Barney had brought in the sweet peas and left them on 
the porch table, or Bart had gathered a particularly 
beautiful wild bouquet in one of his tramps, I had lin- 
gered over a book or some bit of work upstairs until 
almost the time for the next meal, and then, seeing the 
half- withered look of reproach that flowers wear when 
they have been long out of water, I have jammed them 
helter-skelter into the first receptacle at hand. 

Sometimes a little rough verbal handling stirs up the 
blood under a too-complacent cuticle. Maria's preach- 
ment did me good, the more probably because the time 
was ripe for it, and therefore the past two weeks have 
been filled with new pleasures, for another thing that 
the month spent in the open has shown me is the wonder- 
ful setting the natural environment and foliage gives 
to a flower. At first the completeness appeals insensibly, 



FRANKNESS AND GARDENING 21 1 

and unless one is of the temperament that seeks the 
cause behind the effect, it might never be realized. 

The Japanese have long since arrived at a method 
of arranging flowers which is quality and intrinsic value 
as opposed to miscellaneous quantity. The way of 
nature, however, it seems to me, is twofold, for there are 
flowers that depend for beauty, and this with nature 
that seems only another word for perpetuity, upon the 
strength of numbers, as well as those that make a more 
individual appeal. The composite flowers — daisies, 
asters, goldenrod — belong to the class that take natu- 
rally to massing, while the blue flag, meadow and wood 
lilies, together with the spiked orchises, are typical of 
the second. 

By the same process of comparison I have decided 
that jars and vases having floral decorations themselves 
are wholly unsuitable for holding flowers. They should 
be cherished as bric-a-brac, when they are worthy speci- 
mens of the art of potter and painter, but as receptacles 
for flowers they have no use beyond holding sprays of 
beautiful foliage or silver-green masses of ferns. 

Porcelain, plain in tint and of carefully chosen colours, 
such as beef-blood, the old rose, and peach-blow hues, in 
which so many simple forms and inexpensive bits of 
Japanese pottery may be bought, a peculiar creamy 



2i2 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

yellow, a dull green, gobelin, and Delft blue and white, 
sacred to the jugs and bowls of our grandmothers, all 
do well. Cut glass is a fine setting for flowers of strong 
colour, but kills the paler hues, and above and beyond 
all is the dark moss-green glass of substantial texture 
that is fashioned in an endless variety of shapes. By 
chance, gift, and purchase we have gathered about a dozen 
pieces of this, ranging from a cylinder almost the size 
of an umbrella-stand down through fluted, hat-shaped 
dishes, for roses or sweet peas, to some little troughs of 
conventional shapes in which pansies or other short- 
stemmed flowers may be arranged so as to give the look 
of an old-fashioned parterre to the dining table. 

I had always found these useful, but never quite 
realized to the full that green or brown is the only consist- 
ent undercolour for all field and grass-growing flowers 
until this summer. But during days that I have spent 
browsing in the river woods, while Bart and Barney, 
and more recently Larry, have been digging the herbs 
that we have marked, I have realized the necessity of 
a certain combination of earth, bark, and dead-leaf 
browns in the receptacles for holding wood flowers and 
the vines that in their natural ascent clasp and cling to 
the trunks and limbs of trees. 

Several years ago mother sent me some pretty flower- 



FRANKNESS AND GARDENING 213 

holders made of bamboos of different lengths, intended 
evidently to hang against door-jambs or in hallways. 
The pith was hollowed out here and there, and the hole 
plugged from beneath to make little water pockets. 
These did admirably for a season, but when the wood 
dried, it invariably split, and treacherous dripping fol- 
lowed, most ruinous to furniture. 

A few weeks back, when looking at some mossed and 
gnarled branches in the woods, an idea occurred to Bart 
and me at the same moment. Why could we not use 
such pieces as these, together with some trunks of your 
beloved white birch, to which I, via the screen at Opal 
Farm, was becoming insensibly devoted at the very 
time that you wrote me? 

Augur holes could be bored in them at various dis- 
tances and angles, if not too acute; the thing was to 
find glass, in bottle or other forms, to fit in the openings. 
This difficulty was solved by The Man from Everywhere 
on his reappearance the night before the Fourth, after 
an absence of a whole week, laden with every manner 
of noise and fire making arrangement for the Infant, 
though I presently found that Bart had partly instigated 
the outfit, and the two overgrown boys revelled in fire- 
balloons and rockets under cover of the Infant's en- 
thusiasm, much as the grandpa goes to the circus as an 



214 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

apparent martyr to little Tommy's desire ! A large 
package that, from the extreme care of its handling, I 
judged must hold something highly explosive, on being 
opened divulged many dozens of the slender glass tubes, 
with a slight lip for holding cord or wire, such as, filled 
with roses or orchids, are hung in the garlands of as- 
paragus vines and smilax in floral decorations of either 
houses or florists' windows. These tubes varied in 
length from four to six inches, the larger being three 
inches in diameter. 

"Behold your leak -proof interiors!" he cried, hold- 
ing one up. "Now set your wits and Bart's tool-box 
to work and we shall have some speedy results!" 

Dear Man from Everywhere, he had bought a gross 
of the glasses, thereby reminding me of a generous but 
eccentric great-uncle of ours who had a passion for at- 
tending auctions, and once, by error, in buying, as he 
supposed, twelve yellow earthenware bowls, found him- 
self confronted by twelve dozen. Thus grandmother's 
storeroom literally had a golden lining, and my entire 
childhood was pervaded with these bowls, several finally 
falling into my possession for the mixing of mud pies ! 
But between the durability of yellow bowls and blown- 
glass tubes there is little parallel, and already I have 
found the advantage of having a good supply in stock. 



FRANKNESS AND GARDENING 215 

Our first natural flower-holder is a great success. 
Having found a four-pronged silver birch, with a broken 
top, over in the abandoned gravel-pit (where, by the way, 
are a score of others to be had for the digging, and such 
easy digging too), Larry sawed it off a bit below the 
ground, so as to give it an even base. The diameter 
of the four uprights was not quite a foot, all told, and 
these were sawn of unequal lengths of four, six, seven, 
and nine inches, care being taken not to "haggle," as 
Larry calls it, the clean white bark in the process. 

Then Bart went to work with augur and round chisel, 
and bored and chipped out the holes for the glass tubes, 
incidentally breaking two glasses before we had comforta- 
bly settled the four, for they must fit snugly enough not 
to wiggle and tip, and yet not so tight as to bind and pre- 
vent removal for cleaning purposes. This little stand 
of natural wood was no sooner finished and mounted 
on the camp table than its possibilities began to crowd 
around it. Ferns being the nearest at hand, I crawled 
over the crumbling bank wall into the Opal Farm 
meadow and gathered hay-scented, wood, and lady ferns 
from along the fence line and grouped them loosely in 
the stand. The effect was magical, a bit of its haunt 
following the fem indoors. 

Next day I gathered in the hemlock woods a basket 



2i6 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

of the waxy, spotted-leaved pipsissewa, together with 
spikes and garlands of club moss. I had thought these 
perfect when steadied by bog moss in a flat, cut-glass 
dish, but in the birch stump they were entirely at home. 
If these midsummer wood flowers harmonize so well, 
how much more charming will be the blossoms of early 
spring, a season when the white birch is quite the most 
conspicuous tree in the landscape ! Picture dog-tooth vio- 
lets, spring beauties, bellwort, Quaker-ladies, and great 
tufts of violets, shading from white to deepest blue, in 
such a setting ! Or, of garden things, poets' narcissus 
and lilies-of-the- valley ! 

Other receptacles of a like kind we have in different 
stages of progress, made of the wood of sassafras, oak, 
beech, and hackberry, together with several irregular 
stumps of lichen-covered cedar. Two long limbs with 
several short side branches Bart has flattened on the 
back and arranged with picture- hooks, so that they can 
be bracketed against the frame of the living-room door, 
opposite the flower-greeting table that I have fashioned 
after yours. These are to be used for vines, and I 
shall try to keep this wide, open portal cheerfully 
garlanded. 

The first week of my flower wardenship was a most 
strenuous one. I use the word reluctantly, but having 



FRANKNESS AND GARDENING 217 

tried half a dozen others, no equivalent seemed to fit. 
I had flowers in every room in the house, bedchambers 
included, using in this connection the cleanest-breathed 
and longest-lived blossoms possible. 

Late as was the sowing, the annuals remaining in the 
seed bed have begun to yield a glorious crop. The 
fireplaces were filled with black-eyed Susans from the 
fields and hollyhocks from an old self-seeded colony at 
Opal Farm, and every available vase, bowl, and pitcher 
had something in it. How I laboured ! I washed jars, 
sorted colours, and freshened still passable arrangements 
of the day before, and all the while I felt sure that Maria 
was watching me, with an amused twinkle in the tail 
of her eye ! 

One day, the middle of last week, the temperature 
dropped suddenly, and we fled from camp to the house 
for twenty-four hours, lighted the logs in the hall, and 
actually settled down to a serious game of whist in the 
evening, Maria Maxwell, The Man, Bart, and I. Yes, I 
know how you detest the game, but I — though I am not 
exactly amused by it — rather like it, for it gives occupa- 
tion at once for the hands and thoughts and a cover for 
studying the faces and moods of friends without the 
reproach of staring. 

By the way, The Man has hired half the house from 



218 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

Amos Opie — it was divided several years ago — and 
established helter-skelter bachelor quarters at Opal 
Farm. Bart has told him, over and over again, how wel- 
come he is to stay here, under any and all conditions, 
while he works in the vicinity, but he says that he needs 
a lot of room for his traps, muddy boots, etc., while Opie, 
a curious Jack-at-all-trades, gives him his breakfast. 
I'm wondering if The Man felt that he was intruding 
upon Maria by staying here, or if she has any Mrs. 
Grundy ideas and was humpy to him, or even suggested 
that he would better move up the road. She is quite 
capable of it ! 

However, he seems glad enough to drop in to dinner 
of an evening now, and the two are so delightfully cordial 
and unembarrassed in their talk, neither yielding a jot 
to the other, in the resolute spinster and bachelor fashion, 
that I must conclude that his going was probably a 
natural happening. 

This evening, while Maria and I were waiting together 
for the men to finish toying with their coffee cups and 
match-boxes and emerge refreshed from the delightful 
indolence of the after-dinner smoke, the odour of the 
flowers — intensified both by dampness and the wood- 
smoke — was very manifest. 

"How do you like your employment?" asked Maria. 



FRANKNESS AND GARDENING 219 

"I like the decorative and inventive part of it," I 
said, thinking into the fire, "but I believe" — and here 
I hesitated as a chain of peculiar green flame curled 
about the log and held my attention. "That it is quite 
as possible to overdo the house decoration with flowers 
as it is to spoil a nice bit of lawn with too many fan- 
tastic flower beds!" Bart broke in quite unexpect- 
edly, coming behind me and raising my face, one hand 
beneath my chin. "Isn't that what you were thinking, 
my Lady Lazy?" 

"Truly it was, only I never meant to let it pop out 
so suddenly and rudely," I was forced to confess. "In 
one way it would seem impossible to have too many 
flowers about, and yet in another it is unnatural, for 
are not nature's unconscious effects made by using colour 
as a central point, a focus that draws the eye from a more 
sombre and soothing setting?" 

"How could we enjoy a sunset that held the whole 
circle of the horizon at once ? " chimed in The Man, sud- 
denly, as if reading my thoughts. " Or twelve moons ? " 
added Bart, laughing. 

No, Mrs. Evan, I am convinced by so short a trial 
as two weeks that the art of arranging flowers for the 
house is first, your plan of having some to greet the guest 
as he enters, a bit of colour or coolness in each room 



220 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

where we pause to read or work or chat, and a table 
garnishing to render aesthetic the aspect and surround- 
ings of the human animal at his feeding time ; otherwise, 
except at special seasons of festivity, a surplus of flowers 
in the house makes for restlessness, not peace. Two days 
ago I had thirty-odd vases and jars filled with flowers, 
and I felt, as I sat down to sew, as if I was trespassing 
in a bazaar ! Also, if there are too many jars of various 
flowers in one room, it is impossible that each should 
have its own individuality. 

To-day I began my new plan. I put away a part 
of my jars and vases and deliberately thought out 
what flowers I would use before gathering them. 

The day being overcast though not threatening, 
merely the trail, as it were, of the storm that had passed, 
and the den being on the north side of the house and 
finished in dark woodwork and furniture, I gathered 
nasturtiums in three shades for it, the deep crimson, 
orange-scarlet, and canary-yellow, but not too many — 
a blue- and- white jar of the Chinese "ginger" pattern for 
one corner of the mantel-shelf, and for the Japanese well 
buckets, that are suspended from the central hanging 
lamp by cords, a cascade of blossoms of the same colour 
still attached to their own fleshy vines and interspersed 
with the foliage. Strange as it may seem, this little bit 



FRANKNESS AND GARDENING 221 

of pottery, though of a peculiar deep pink, harmon- 
izes wonderfully well with the barbaric nasturtium 
colours. There seems to be a kind of magic blended 
with the form and colour of these buckets, plain and 
severe in shape, that swing so gracefully from their 
silken cords, for they give grace to every flower that 
touches them. When filled with stiff stalks of lilies- 
of-the- valley or tulips, they have an equally distinguished 
air as when hung with the bells of columbines or gar- 
lands of flowering honeysuckles twisted about the cords 
climbing quite up to the lamp. 

In the hall I placed my tallest green-glass jar upon the 
greeting table and filled it with long stalks of red and 
gold Canada lilies from the very bottom of Amos 
Opie's field, where the damp meadow-grass begins to 
make way for tussocks and the marshy ground 
begins. 

The field now is as beautiful as a dream ; the early 
grasses have ripened, and above them, literally by the 
hundreds, — rank, file, regiment, and platoon, — stand 
these lilies, some stalks holding twenty bells, ranged as 
regularly as if the will of man had set them there, and 
yet poised so gracefully that we know at once that no 
human touch has placed them. I wish that you could 
have stood with me in the doorway of the camp and 



222 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

looked across that field this morning. Bart declared the 
sight to be the first extra dividend upon our payment 
to Amos Opie for leaving the grass uncut. 

I left the stalks of the lilies full three feet long and used 
only their own foliage, together with some broad-leaved 
grasses, to break the too abrupt edge of the glass. This 
is a point that must be remembered in arranging flowers, 
the keeping the relative height and habit of the plant in 
the mind's eye. These lilies, gathered with short stems 
and massed in a crowded bunch, at once lose their in- 
dividuality and become mere little freckled yellow 
gamins of the flower world. 

A rather slender jar or vase also gives an added sense 
of height ; long-stemmed flowers should never be put 
in a flat receptacle, no matter how adroitly they may be 
held in place. Only last month I was called upon to 
admire a fine array of long-stemmed roses that were held 
in a flat dish by being stuck in wet sand, and even though 
this was covered by green moss, the whole thing had a 
painfully artificial and embalmed look, impossible to 
overcome. 

For the living room, which is in quiet green tones and 
chintz -upholstered wicker furniture, I gathered Shirley 
poppies. They are not as large and perfectly developed 
as those I once saw in your garden from fall-sown seed, 



FRANKNESS AND GARDENING 223 

but they are so delicately tinted and the petals so grace- 
fully winged that it seemed like picking handfuls of 
butterflies. 

Maria Maxwell has shown me how, by looking at the 
stamens, I can tell if the flower is newly opened, for by 
picking only such they will last two full days. How 
lasting are youthful impressions ! She remembers all 
these things, though she has had no very own garden 
these ten years and more. Will the Infant remember 
creeping into my cot in these summer mornings, cuddling 
and being crooned to like a veritable nestling, until her 
father gains sufficient consciousness to take his turn 
and delight her by the whistled imitation of a few simple 
bird songs? Yes, I think so, and I would rather give 
her this sort of safeguard to keep off harmful thoughts 
and influences than any worldly wisdom. 

The poppies I arranged in my smallest frosted-white 
and cut-glass vases in two rows on the mantel-shelf, 
before the quaint old oblong mirror, making it look like 
a miniature shrine. Celia Thaxter had this way of 
using them, if I remember rightly, the reflection in the 
glass doubling the beauty and making the frail things 
seem alive ! 

For the library, where oak and blue are the prevailing 
tints, I filled a silver tankard with a big bunch of blue 



224 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

cornflowers, encircled by the leaves of "dusty miller," 
and placed it on the desk. 

The dining-room walls are of deep dark red that must 
be kept cool in summer. At all seasons I try to have the 
table decorations low enough not to oblige us to peer at 
one another through a green mist, and to-day I made a 
wreath of hay-scented ferns and ruby-spotted Japan 
lilies (Speciosum rubrum, the tag says — they were sent 
as extras with my seeds), by combining two half-moon 
dishes, and in the middle set a slender, finely cut, flar- 
ing vase holding two perfect stems, each bearing half 
a dozen lily buds and blossoms. These random bulbs 
are the first lilies of my own planting. There are a few 
stalks of the white Madonna lilies in the grass of the 
old garden and a colony of tiger lilies and an upright 
red lily with different sort of leaves, all clustered at the 
root, following the tumble -down wall, the rockery 
to be. I am fascinated by these Japanese lilies and 
desire more, each stalk is so sturdy, each flower so 
beautifully finished and set with jewels and then 
powdered with gold, as it were. Pray tell me some- 
thing about the rest of the family ! Do they come 
within my range and pocket, think you? The first 
cost of a fair-sized bed would be considerable, but if 
they are things that by care will endure, it is some- 



FRANKNESS AND GARDENING 225 

thing to save up for, when the rose bed is completed — 
take note of that ! 

When Bart came home this afternoon, he walked 
through the rooms before going out and commented 
on the different flowers, entirely simple in arrangement, 
and lingered over them, touching and taking pleasure 
in them in a way wholly different from last week, 
when each room was a jungle and I was fairly suffering 
from flower surfeit. 

Now I find myself taking note of happy combinations 
of colour in other people's gardens and along the high- 
ways for further experiments. I seem to remember 
looking over a list of flower combinations and sugges- 
tions in your garden book. Will you lend it to me? 

By the way, opal effects seem to circle about the place 
this season — the sunsets, the farm-house windows, and 
finally that rainy night when we were playing whist, 
when The Man, taking a pencil from his pocket, pulled 
out a little chamois bag that, being loose at one end, 
shed a shower of the unset stones upon the green cloth, 
where they lay winking and blinking like so many fiery 
coals. 

"Are you a travelling jeweler's shop?" quizzed Bart. 

"No," replied The Man, watching the stones where 
they lay, but not attempting to pick them up; "the 



226 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

opal is my birth stone, and I've always had a fancy for 
picking them up at odd times and carrying them with 
me for luck!" 

"I thought that they are considered unlucky," said 
Maria, holding one in the palm of her hand and watch- 
ing the light play upon it. 

"That is as one reads them," said The Man; "to 
me they are occasionally contradictory, that is all; 
otherwise they represent adaptation to circumstances, 
and inexpensive beauty, which must always be a 
consolation." 

Then he gave us each one, "to start a collection," 
he said. I shall have mine set as a talisman for the 
Infant. I like this new interpretation of the stone, 
for to divine beauty in simple things is a gift equal to 
genius. 

Maria, however, insisted upon giving an old-fashioned 
threepenny bit, kept as a luck penny in the centre of 
her purse, in exchange. How can any woman be so 
devoid of even the little sentiment of gifts as she is? 

A moment later The Man from Everywhere elec- 
trified us by saying, in the most casual manner, "Now 
that we are on the subject of opals, did I tell you that, 
being in some strange manner drawn to the place, I 
have made Opie an offer for the Opal Farm?" 



FRANKNESS AND GARDENING 227 

"Good enough! but what for?" exclaimed Bart, 
nearly exposing a very poor hand. 

"How splendid!" I cried, checking an impulse 
to throw my arms around his neck so suddenly that I 
shied my cards across the room — "Then the meadow 
need never be cut again !" 

"What a preposterous idea! Did he accept the 
offer ? " jerked Maria Maxwell, with a certain eagerness. 

The Man's face, already of a healthy outdoor hue, 
took a deeper colour above the outline of his closely 
cropped black beard, which he declined to shave, in spite 
of prevailing custom. 

"I'm afraid my popularity as a neighbour is a minor 
quality, when even my Lady Lazy makes it evident that 
her enthusiasm is for meadow weeds and not myself!" 

"When would you live there?" asked practical Bart. 

"All the time, when I'm not elsewhere!" said The 
Man. "No, seriously, I want permanent headquarters, 
a house to keep my traps in, and it can easily be some- 
what remodelled and made comfortable. I want to 
own a resting-place for the soles of my feet when they 
are tired, and is it strange that I should pitch my tent 
near two good friends?" 

It was a good deal for The Man to say, and instantly 
there was hand- shaking and back-clapping between 



228 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

Bart and himself, and the game became hopelessly 
mixed. 

As for Maria, she as nearly sniffed audibly at the idea 
as a well-bred woman could. It is strange, I had almost 
fancied during the course of the past month, and 
especially this evening, that The Marts glance, when 
toward her, held a special approval of a different 
variety than it carried to Bart and me ! If Maria 
is going to worry him, she shall go back to her flat ! 
I've often heard Bart say that men's feelings are very 
woundable at forty, while at twenty-five a hurt closes 
up like water after a pebble has been dropped in it. 

******* 

Yes, Maria has been rude to The Man, and in my 
house, too, where she represents me ! Anastasia told 
me ! I suppose I really ought not to have listened, 
but it was all over before I realized what she was 
saying. 

"Yes, mem, for all Miss Marie do be fixed out, so 
tasty and pleasant like to everybody, and so much 
chicked up by the country air, she's no notion o' beaus 
or of troubling wid the men !" 

"What do you mean, Anastasia?" said I, in perfect 
innocence. " Of course Miss Maria is not a young girl 
to go gadding about!" 



FRANKNESS AND GARDENING 229 

" It's not gadding I mean, mem, but here on the porch, 
one foine night, jest before the last time Mister Blake 
went off fer good, they was sat there some toime, so still 
that, says I to meself , ' When they do foind spach, it'll 
be something worth hearing!' 

" ' Do I annoy you by staying here ? Would you prefer 
I went elsewhere ? ' says he, and well I moind the words, 
for Oi thought an offer was on the road, and as 'twas 
the nearest I'd been to wan, small wonder I got ex- 
coited ! Then Miss Marie spoke up, smooth as a knife 
cutting ice cream, — 'To speak frankly,' says she, 'you 
do not exactly annoy me, but I'd much rather you went 
elsewhere!' Och, but it broke me heart, the sound of 
it!" 



LIST OF FLOWER COMBINATIONS FOR 

THE TABLE FROM BARBARA'S 

GARDEN BOKE 

HEAVILY SCENTED FLOWERS, SUCH AS HYACINTHS, LEMON AND AURA- 
TUM LILIES, POLYANTHUS NARCISSUS, MAGNOLIAS, LILACS, AND THE 
LIKE, SHOULD BE AVOIDED. 

Snowdrops and pussy-willows. 

Hepaticas and moss. 

Spice-bush and shad-bush sprays. 

Trailing arbutus and sweet, white garden violets. 

Double daffodils and willow sprays. 

Crocus buds and moss. 

Blue garden scillas and wild white saxifrage. 

Black-birch catkins and wind-flowers. 

Plants of the various wild violets, according to season, arranged 

in an earthen pan with a moss or bark covering. 
Old-fashioned myrtle, with its glossy leaves, and single narcissus, 

or English primroses. 
Bleeding-heart and young ferns. 
English border primroses in small rose bowls. 
Lilies-of -the -valley, with plenty of their own leaves, and poets' 

narcissus. 
Tulip-tree flowers and leaves. 

The wild red-and-gold columbine with young white-birch sprays. 
Pinxter flower and the New York or wood fern. 
Jack-in -the-pulpit with its own leaves, in a bark or moss 

covered jar. 

230 



LIST OF FLOWER COMBINATIONS 231 

Pink moccasin-flowers with ferns, in bark-covered jar. 

Pansies with ivy or laurel leaves, arranged in narrow dishes to 

form a parterre about a central mirror. 
Iceland poppies with small ferns or grasses. 
May pinks and forget-me-nots. 

Blue larkspurs and deutzia (always put white with blue flowers). 
Peonies with evergreen ferns, in a central jar. 
Sweet-william, arranged in separate colours for parterre effect 

or in a large blue-and-white bowl, with graceful sprays of 

honeysuckle flowers. 
Wild roses with plenty of buds and foliage, in blue-and-white 

bowls. 
Roses in large sprays with branches of the young leaves of cop- 
per beech — ■ or masses of Chinese honeysuckle. 
Roses with short stems arranged with their own or rugosa foliage 

in blue-and-white dishes that have coarse wire netting fitted 

to the top to keep the flowers in place. 
White field daisies, clover, and flowering grasses, in a large 

bowl or jar. 
Mountain laurel with its own leaves, in central jar and parterre 

dishes. 
Nasturtiums, in cut-glass bowl or vase, with the foliage of 

lemon verbena. 
Sweet peas of five colours with a fringe of maiden -hair ferns, 

the deepest colour in a central jar, with other smaller 

bowls at corners, and small ferns laid around mirror and 

on cloth between. 
Japan lilies, single flowers, in parterre dishes with ivy leaves, and 

sprays in central vase. 
Balsams arranged in effect of set borders. 
Asters in separate colours. 



232 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

Spotted-leaved pipsissewa of the woods with fern border, in bark- 
covered dish. 
Red and gold bell meadow lilies, in large jar, with field grasses. 
Gladioli — the flowers separated from the stalks and arranged 

with various leaves for parterre effect, or stalks laid upon the 

cloth with evergreen ferns to separate the places at a 

formal meal. 
Sweet sultan, in separate colours, in rose bowls, with fragrant 

geranium or lemon-verbena foliage. 
Shirly poppies with grasses or green rye, in four slender vases 

about a larger centrepiece. 
Margaret or picotee carnations with mignonette, arranged loosely 

in a cut-glass vase or bowl. 
Green rye, wheat, or oats with the blue garden cornflower — 

or wild blue chickory. 
Wild asters with heavy tasselled marsh-grasses. 
Goldenrods with purple iron weed and vines of wild white 

clematis, arranged about a flat dish of peaches and pears. 
All through autumn place your central mirror on a mat made by 

laying freshly gathered coloured leaves upon the cloth. 
Wallflowers and late pansies. 
White Japanese anemonies and ferns. 
Grass of Parnassus, ladies tresses, and marsh shield ferns. 
Garden chrysanthemums, in blue-and-white jars and bowls, on a 

large mat of brown magnolia leaves. 
Sprays of yellow witch-hazel flowers and leaves of red oak. 
Sprays of coral winterberry, from which leaves have been 

removed, and white-pine tassels. 
Club-mosses, small evergreen ferns, and partridge vine with its 

red berries, in a bark-covered dish of earth. 



XI 

A SEASIDE GARDEN 

(Barbara Campbell to Mary Penrose) 
Gray Rocks, July 19. Your epistle upon the evils 
of an excess of flowers in the house found us here with 
the Cortrights and Bradfords, and I read it with Lavinia 
and Sylvia on either side, as the theme had many notes 
in it familiar to us all ! There are certainly times and 
seasons when the impulse is overpowering to lay hold 
of every flower that comes in the way and gather it to 
one's self, to cram every possible nook and corner with 
this portable form of beauty and fairly indulge in a flower 
orgie. Then sets in a reaction that shows, as in so 
many things, the middle path is the best for every day. 
Also there are many enthusiastic gardeners, both among 
those who grow their own flowers and those who cause 
them to be grown, who spare neither pains nor money 
until the flowers are gathered ; then their grip relaxes, 
and the house arrangement of the fruit of their labour 
is left to chance. 

In many cases, where a professional gardener is in 
233 



234 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

charge, several baskets, containing a confused mass of 
blossoms, are deposited daily in porch or pantry, often 
at a time when the mistress is busy, and they are either 
overlooked or at the last moment crammed into the first 
receptacle that comes to hand, from their very inoppor- 
tuneness creating almost a feeling of dislike. 

When once lodged, they are frequently left to their 
fate until they become fairly noisome, for is there any- 
thing more offensive to aesthetic taste than blackened 
and decaying flowers soaking in stagnant water? 

Was it not Auerbach, in his Poet and Merchant, who 
said, "The lovelier a thing is in its perfection, the more 
terrible it becomes through its corruption"? and cer- 
tainly this applies to flowers. 

Flowers, like all of the best and lasting pleasures, 
must be taken a little seriously from the sowing of the 
seed to the placing in the vase, that they may become 
the incense of home, and the most satisfactory way of 
choosing them for this use is to make a daily tour about 
the garden, or, if a change is desired, through the fields 
and highways, and, with the particular nook you wish 
to fill in mind, gather them yourself. 

Even the woman with too wide a selection to gather 
from personally can in this way indicate what she 
wishes. 



A SEASIDE GARDEN 235 

In the vegetable garden the wise man thinks out his 
crop and arranges a variety for the table ; no one wishes 
every vegetable known to the season every day, and why 
should not the eye be educated and nourished by an 
equal variety? 

We are all very much interested in your flower-holders 
of natural wood, and I will offer you an idea in exchange, 
after the truly cooperative Garden, You, and I plan. 
In the flower season, instead of using your embroidered 
centrepieces for the table, which become easily stained 
and defaced by having flowers laid upon them, make 
several artistic table centres of looking-glass, bark, moss, 
or a combination of all three. 

Lavinia Cortright and I, as a beginning, have oval 
mirrors of about eighteen inches in length, with invisibly 
narrow nickel bindings. Sometimes we use these with 
merely an edge of flowers or leaves and a crystal basket 
or other low arrangement of flowers in the centre. 
The glass is only a beginning, other combinations being 
a birch-bark mat, several inches wider than the glass, 
that may be used under it so that a wide border 
shows, or the mat by itself as a background for 
delicate wood flowers and ferns. A third mat I have 
made of stout cardboard and covered with lichens, 
reindeer moss, and bits of mossy bark, and I never go 



236 THE GARDEN, YOU,, AND I 

to the woods but what I see a score of things that fairly 
thrust themselves before me and offer to blend with 
one of these backgrounds, and by holding the eye help 
to render meal-times less "foody," as Sukey Latham 
puts it, though none the less nourishing. 

Last night when we gathered at dinner, a few moments 
after our arrival and our first meeting at this cottage, 
I at once became aware that though host and hostess 
were the same delightful couple, we were not dining 
at Meadow's End, their Oaklands cottage, but at 
Gray Rocks, with silver sea instead of green grass 
below the windows. While the sea surroundings were 
brought indoors and on the centre of the dinner table 
the mirror was edged by a border of sea-sand, glistening 
pebbles and little shells were arranged as a background 
instead of mosses and lichens, and rich brown seaweeds 
still moist with the astringent tonic sea breath edged 
this frame, and the more delicate rose-coloured and 
pale green weeds seemed floating upon the glass, that 
held a giant periwinkle shell filled with the pink star- 
shaped sabbatia, or sea pink, of the near-by salt marshes. 
There was no effort, no strain after effect, but a con- 
sistent preparation of the eye for the simple meal of sea 
food that followed. 

In front of the cottage the rocks slope quickly to the 



A SEASIDE GARDEN 237 

beach, but on either side there is a stretch of sand 
pocketed among the rocks, and in the back a dune stops 
abruptly at the margin of wide salt meadows, creek- 
fed and unctuous, as befits the natural gardens of the 
sea. 

The other cottages lying to the eastward are gay 
in red- and- white striped awnings, and porch and window 
boxes painted red or green are rilled with geraniums, nas- 
turtiums, petunias, — any flowers, in short, that will thrive 
in the broiling sun, while some of the owners have 
planted buoy-like barrels at the four corners of their 
enclosures and filled them with the same assortment of 
foliage plants with which they would decorate a village 
lawn. This use of flowers seemed at once to draw the 
coolness from the easterly breeze and intensify the heat 
that vibrates from the sand. 

Have you ever noticed that the sea in these latitudes 
has no affinity for the brightest colours, save as it is a 
mirror for the fleeting flames of sunrise and sunset? 

The sea-birds are blended tints of rock, sand, sky, 
and water, save the dash of coral in bill and foot of 
a few, just as the coral of the wild-rose hips blends with 
the tawny marsh-grasses. Scarlet is a colour abhorred 
even by the marshes, until late in autumn the blaze of 
samphire consumes them with long spreading tongues 



238 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

of flame. How can people be so senseless as to come 
seaward to cool their bodies, and yet so surround them- 
selves with scarlet that it is never out of range of the eye ? 

Lavinia Cortright and the botanical Bradfords, as 
Evan calls them, because though equally lovers of flowers, 
they go further than some for the reason why that lies 
hid beneath the colour and perfume, have laid out and 
are still developing a sand garden that, while giving 
the cottage home the restful air that is a garden's 
first claim, has still the distinct identity of the sand 
and sea ! 

To begin, with one single exception, they have drawn 
upon the wild for this garden, even as you are doing in 
the restoration of your knoll. Back of the cottage a 
dozen yards is a sand ridge covering some fairly good, 
though mongrel, loam, for here, as along most of the 
coasts of sounds and bays, the sea, year by year, has bitten 
into the soil and at the same time strewn it with sand. 
Considering this as the garden boundary, a windbreak 
of good-sized bayberry bushes has been placed there, not 
in a stiff line, but in blended groups, enclosing three 
sides, these bays being taken from a thicket of them 
farther toward the marshes. 

An alley from the back porch into this enclosure is 
bordered on either side by bushes of beach plum, that, 



A SEASIDE GARDEN 239 

when covered with feathery white bloom in May, before 
the leaves appear, gives the sandy shore the only orchard 
touch it knows. Of course the flowering period is over 
when the usual shore season begins, though nowadays 
there is no off time — people go to shore and country 
when they are moved; yet the beach plum is a pic- 
turesque bush at any time, especially when, in Sep- 
tember, it is loaded with the red purple fruit. In the 
two spaces on either side the alley the sand is filled with 
massed plants that, when a little more time has been 
given them for stretching and anchoring their roots, 
will straightway weave a flower mat upon the sand. 

Down beyond the next point, one day last autumn, 
Horace and Sylvia found a plantation of our one New 
England cactus, the prickly pear {Ofuntia opuntia). 
We have it here and there in our rocky pasture ; but in 
greater heat and with better underfeeding it seemed a 
bit of a tropical plain dropped on the eastern coast. Do 
you know the thing? The leaves are shaped like the 
fans of a lobster's tail and sometimes are several- jointed, 
smooth except for occasional tufts of very treacherous 
spikes, and of a peculiar semitranslucent green; the 
half-double flowers set on the leaf edges are three inches 
across and of a brilliant sulphur-yellow, with tasselled 
stamens ; the fruit is fleshy, somewhat fig-shaped, and 



240 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

of a dark red when ripe — altogether a very decorative 
plant, though extremely difficult to handle. 

After surveying the plantation on all sides, the tongs 
used by the oyster dredges suggested themselves to 
Horace, and thus grasped, the prickly pears were safely 
moved and pegged in their new quarters with long pieces 
of bent wire, the giant equivalents of the useful hairpins 
that I recommended for pegging down your ferns. 

Now the entire plot of several yards square, appar- 
ently untroubled by the removal, is in full bloom, and 
has been for well-nigh a month, they say, though the in- 
dividual blossoms are but things of a day. Close by, 
another yellow flower, smaller but more pickable, is 
just now waving, the rock rose or frostweed, bearing 
two sorts of flowers : the conspicuous yellow ones, some- 
what resembling small evening primroses, while all 
the ground between is covered with an humble member 
of the rock rose family — the tufted beach heather 
with its intricate branches, reminding one more of a club- 
moss than a true flowering plant. Not a scrap of sand 
in the enclosure is left uncovered, and the various plants 
are set closely, like the grasses and wild flowers of a 
meadow, the sand pinweed that we gather, together 
with sea lavender, for winter bouquets much resembling 
a flowering grass. 



A SEASIDE GARDEN 241 

The rabbit -foot clover takes kindly to the sandy 
soil, and, as it flowers from late May well into September, 
and holds its little furry tails like autumn pussy-willows 
until freezing weather, makes a very interesting sort 
of bed all by itself, and massed close to it, as if rec- 
ognizing the family relationship, is the little creeping 
bush clover with its purplish flowers. 

Next, set thickly in a mass representing a stout bush, 
comes the fleshy beach pea with rosy purple flowers. 
When it straggles along according to its sweet will, it 
has a poor and weedy look, but massed so that the some- 
what difficult colour is concentrated, it is very decorative, 
and it serves as a trellis for the trailing wild bean, a 
sand lover that has a longer flowering season. 

A patch of a light lustrous purple, on closer view, 
proves to be a mass of the feathered spikes of blaz- 
ing star or colic-root, first cousin of the gay-feather of 
the West, that sometimes grows six feet high and has 
been welcomed to our gardens. 

On the opposite side of the beach-plum alley, the 
Bradfords have made preparations for autumn glory, 
such as we always drive down to the marsh lands from 
Oaklands not only to see but to gather and take home. 
Masses of the fleshy tufted seaside goldenrod, now just 
beginning to throw up its stout flowerstalks, flank a bed 



242 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

of wild asters twenty feet across. Here are gathered 
all the asters that either love or will tolerate dry soil, a 
certain bid for their favour having been made by mixing 
several barrels of stiff loam with the top sand, as an 
encouragement until the roots find the hospitable mix- 
ture below. 

The late purple aster {patens) with its broad clasping 
leaves, the smooth aster {Icevis) with its violet-blue 
flowers, are making good bushes and preparing for the 
pageant. Here is the stiff white-heath aster, the fa- 
miliar Michaelmas daisy, that is so completely covered 
with snowy flowers that the foliage is obliterated, and 
proves its hold upon the affections by its long string of 
names, — frostweed, white rosemary, and farewell 
summer being among them, — and also the white- wreath 
aster, with the flowers ranged garland-wise among the 
rigid leaves, and the stiff little savory-leaved aster or sand 
starwort with pale violet rays. Forming a broad, 
irregular border about the asters are stout dwarf bushes 
of the common wild rose (humilis), that bears its deep 
pink flowers in late spring and early summer and then 
wears large round hips that change slowly from green 
to deep glowing red, in time to make a frame of coral 
beads for the asters. 

Outside the hedge of bays, where a trodden pathway 



A SEASIDE GARDEN 243 

leads to the boat landing, the weathered rocks, washed 
with soft tints blended of the breath of sea mist and sun- 
set rays, break through the sand. In the lee of these, 
held in place by a line of stones, is a long, low bed of 
large-flowered portulaca, borrowed from inland gar- 
dens, and yet so in keeping with its surroundings as to 
seem a native flower of sea sands. 

The fleshy leaves at a little distance suggest the form 
of many plants of brackish marsh and creek edges, 
and even the glasswort itself. When the day is gray, 
the flowers furl close and disappear, as it were, but 
when the sun beats full upon the sand, a myriad upraised 
fleshy little arms stretch out, each holding a coloured 
bowl to catch the sunbeams, as if the heat made molten 
the sand of quartz and turned it into pottery in tints of 
rose, yellow, amber, scarlet, and carnation striped. It 
was a bold experiment, this garden in the sand, but 
already it is making good. 

Then, too, what a refreshment to the eyes is it, when 
the unbroken expanse of sky and sea before the house 
tires, to turn them landward over the piece of flowers 
toward the cool green marshes ribboned with the pale 
pink camphor-scented fleabane, the almost intangible 
sea lavender, the great rose mallows and cat-tail flags 
of the wet ground, the false indigo that, in the distance, 



244 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

reminds one of the broom of Scottish hills, the orange- 
fringed orchis, pink sabbatia, purple maritime gerardia, 
milkwort, the groundsel tree, that covers itself with 
feathers in autumn, until, far away beyond the upland 
meadows, the silver birches stand as outposts to the cool 
oak woods, in whose shade the splendid yellow gerardia, 
or downy false foxglove, flourishes. Truly, while the 
land garden excels in length of season and profusion, 
the gardens of the sea appeal to the lighter fancies 
and add the charmed spice of variety to out-of-door 
life. 

One of the most interesting features of this cottage 
and its surroundings is the further transplanting of 
Martin Cortright from his city haunts. At Meadow's 
End, though he works in the garden in a dilettante sort of 
way with Lavinia, takes long walks with father, and oc- 
casionally ventures out for a day's fishing with either 
or both of my men, he is still the bookworm who dives 
into his library upon every opportunity and has never 
yet adapted his spine comfortably to the curves of a 
hammock ! In short he seems to love flowers histori- 
cally — more for the sake of those in the past who have 
loved and written of them than for their own sake. 

But here, even as I began to write to you, Mary Pen- 
rose, entrenched in a nook among the steep rocks 



A SEASIDE GARDEN 245 

between the cottage and the sea, a figure coming up the 
sand bar, that runs northward and at low water shows 
a smooth stretch a mile in length, caught my eye. 
Laboriously but persistently it came along ; next I saw 
by the legs that it was a man, a moment later that he 
was lugging a large basket and that a potato fork pro- 
truded from under one arm, and finally that it was none 
other than Martin Cortright, who had been hoeing dili- 
gently in the sand and mud for a couple of hours, that 
his guests might have the most delectable of all suppers, 
— steamed clams, fresh from the water, the condition 
alone under which they may be eaten sans peur et sans 
reproche ! 



XII 



THE TRANSPLANTING OF EVERGREENS 

(Mary Penrose to Barbara Campbell) 
Woodridge, August 8. Back again in our camp, we 
thought to pause awhile, rest on our oars, and drift 
comfortably with the gentle summer tide of things. 
We have transplanted all the ferns and wild herbs 
for which we have room, and as a matter of course 
trees and shrubs must wait until they have shed their 
leaves in October. That is, all the trees that do shed. 
The exceptions are the evergreens, of which the river 
woods contain any number in the shape of hemlocks, 
spruces, and young white pines, the offspring, I take 
it, of a plantation back of the Windom farm, for we have 
not found them anywhere else. 

The best authorities upon the subject of evergreens 
say that trees of small size should be transplanted 
either in April, before they have begun to put on 
their dressy spring plumes, or, if the season be not 
too hot and dry, or the distance considerable, in Au- 
gust, after this growth has matured, time thus being 

246 



TRANSPLANTING OF EVERGREENS 247 

given for them to become settled in the ground before 
winter. 

We weighed the matter well. The pros in favour of 
spring planting lay in the fact that rain is very likely 
to be plentiful in April, and given but half a chance, 
everything grows best in spring; the cons being that 
the spring rush is usually overpowering, that in a late 
season the frost would not be fairly out of the knoll 
and ground by the fence, where we need a windbreak, 
before garden planting time, and that during the 
winter clearing that will take place in the river valley, 
leaf fires may be started by the workmen that will run 
up the banks and menace our treasure-trove of ever- 
greens. 

The pros for August consisted mainly of the pith 
of a proverb and a bit of mad Ophelia's sanity: 
"There is no time like the present" and "We know 
what we are, but know not what we may be!" 

At present we have a good horse, Larry, and plenty 
of time, the con being, suppose we have a dry, hot 
autumn. The fact that we have a new water-barrel 
on wheels and several long-necked water-pots is only 
a partial solution of the difficulty, for the nearest well 
is an old-fashioned arrangement with a sweep, located 
above the bank wall at Opal Farm. This well is an 



248 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

extremely picturesque object in the landscape, but as 
a water-producer as inadequate as the shaving-mug 
with which the nervous gentleman, disturbed at his 
morning task, rushed out to aid in extinguishing 
a fire ! 

Various predictions as to the weather for the month 
have been lavished upon us, the first week having 
produced but one passing shower. Amos Opie fore- 
sees a muggy, rainless period. Larry declares for much 
rain, as it rained at new moon and again at first quarter ; 
but, as he says, as if to release himself from respon- 
sibility, "That's the way we read it in Oireland, but 
maybe, as this is t'other side of the warld, it's all the 
other way round wid rain!" Barney was noncom- 
mittal, but then his temperament is of the kind that 
usually regrets whatever is. 

For three or four days we remained undecided, and 
then The Man from Everywhere brought about a swift 
decision for August transplanting, by the information 
that the general clearing of the woodlands would be- 
gin November first, the time for fulfilling the con- 
tract having been shortened by six months at the final 
settlement. 

We covet about fifty specimen pines and hemlocks 
for the knoll and fully two hundred little hemlocks 



TRANSPLANTING OF EVERGREENS 249 

for the windbreaks, so we at once began the work 
and are giving two days a week to the digging and 
transporting and the other four to watering. That 
is, Bart and Larry are doing this ; I am looking on, 
making suggestions as to which side of a tree should 
be in front, nipping off broken twigs, and doing other 
equally light and pleasant trifles. 

Our system of transplanting is this: we have any 
number of old burlap feed bags, which, having become 
frayed and past their usefulness, we bought at the 
village store for a song. These Larry filled with the 
soft, elastic moss that florists use, of which there is 
any quantity in the low backwater meadows of the 
river. A good-sized tree (and we are not moving any 
of more than four or five feet in height ; larger ones, it 
seems, are better moved in early winter with a ball of 
frozen earth) has a bag to itself, the roots, with some 
earth, being enveloped in the moss, the bag as securely 
bound about them as possible with heavy cord, and 
the whole thing left to soak at the river edge while 
the next one is being wrapped. Of the small hemlocks 
for the windbreak, — and we are using none over two or 
three feet for this purpose, as we want to pinch them 
in and make them stocky, — the roots of three or four 
will often go into a bag. 



250 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

When enough for a day's planting is thus col- 
lected, we go home, stack them in the shade, and the 
next morning the resetting begins ! The bags are 
not opened until they are by the hole in which the trees 
are to be placed, which, by the way, is always made 
and used after the directions you gave us for rose plant- 
ing ; and I'm coming to agree with you that the suc- 
cess in gardening lies more than half in the putting 
under ground, and that the proper spreading and 
securing of roots in earth thoroughly loosened to allow 
new roots to feel and find their way is one of the 
secrets of what is usually termed "luck"! 

This may sound like a very easy way of acquiring 
trees, but it sometimes takes an hour to loosen a sturdy 
pine of four feet. Of course a relentless hand that 
stops at nothing, with a grub-axe and spade, could do 
it in fifteen minutes, but the roots would be cut or 
bruised and the pulling and tugging be so violent that 
not a bit of earth would cleave, and thus the fatal 
drying process set in almost before the digging was 
completed. 

Larry first loosens the soil all about the tree with 
a crowbar, dislodging any binding surface stones 
in the meantime; then the roots are followed to the 
end and secured entire when possible, a bit of detec- 



TRANSPLANTING OF EVERGREENS 251 

tive work more difficult than it sounds in a bank 
where forest trees of old growth have knit roots with 
saplings for mutual protection. 

Setting-out day sees a procession of three water- 
carriers going Indian file up one side of the knoll and 
down the other. Bart declares that by the time his 
vacation is over he will be sufficiently trained to be- 
come captain of the local fire company, which con- 
sists of an antique engine, of about the capacity of one 
water- barrel, and a bucket brigade. 

This profuse use of water, upon the principle of 
imitation, has brought about another demand for it 
on the premises. The state of particularly clay-and- 
leaf-mouldy perspiration in which Bart finds himself 
these days cries aloud for a shower-bath, nor is he or 
his boots and clothing in a suitable condition for 
tramping through the house and turning the family 
bath-tub into a trough wherein one would think flower- 
pots had been washed. 

With the aid of Amos Opie an oil-barrel has been 
trussed up like a miniature windmill tank in the end 
of the camp barn, one end of which rests on the ground, 
and being cellarless has an earth floor. Around the 
supports of this tank is fastened an unbleached cotton 
curtain, and when standing within and pulling a cord 



252 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

attached to an improvised spray, the contents of the 
barrel descend upon Bart's person with hygienic 
thoroughness, the only drawback being that twelve 
pails of water have to be carried up the short ladder 
that leads from floor to barrel top each time the shower 
is used. Bart, however, seems to enjoy the process 
immensely, and Larry, by the way in which he lingers 
about the place and grins, evidently has a secret de- 
sire to experiment with it himself. 

Larry has been a great comfort up to now, but we 
both have an undefined idea that one of his periods 
of "rest" is approaching. He works with feverish 
haste, alternating with times of sitting and looking at 
the ground, that I fear bodes no good. He also seems 
to take a diabolic pleasure in tormenting Amos Opie 
as regards the general make-up and pedigree of his 
beloved hound David. 

David has human intelligence in a setting that it 
would be difficult to classify for a dog-show ; a melan- 
choly bloodhound strain certainly percolates thor- 
oughly through him, and his long ears, dewlaps, and 
front legs, tending to bow, separate him from the fox 
"'ounds" of Larry's experience. To Amos Opie 
David is the only type of hound worthy of the name; 
consequently there has been no little language upon 



TRANSPLANTING OF EVERGREENS 253 

the subject. That is, Larry has done the talking, 
punctuated by contemptuous "huhs" and sniffs from 
Amos, until day before yesterday. On this day David 
went on a hunting trip extending from five o'clock in 
the afternoon until the next morning, during which his 
voice, blending with two immature cries, told that he 
was ranging miles of country in company with a pair 
of thoroughbred fox-hound pups, owned by the post- 
master, the training of which Amos Opie was super- 
intending, and owing to an attack of rheumatism 
had delegated to David, whose reliability for this 
purpose could not be overestimated according to his 
master's way of thinking. For a place in some ways 
so near to civilization, the hills beyond the river woods 
abound in fox holes, and David has conducted some 
good runs on his own account, it seems ; but this time 
alack ! alack ! he came limping slowly home, footsore 
and bedraggled, followed by his pupils and bearing a 
huge dead cat of the half- wild tribe that, born in a 
barn and having no owner, takes to a prowling life 
in the woods. 

I cannot quite appreciate the enormity of the of- 
fence, but doubtless Dr. Russell and your husband 
can, as they live in a fox-hunting country. It seems 
that a rabbit would have been bad enough, something 



254 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

however, to be condoned, — but not a cat ! Instantly 
Amos fixed upon Larry as the responsible cause of 
the calamity, — Larry, who is so soaked in a species of 
folk-lore, blended of tradition, imagination, and high 
spirits that, after hearing him talk, it is easy to believe 
that he deals in magic by the aid of a black cat, and 
unfortunately the cat brought in by David was of this 
colour ! 

Then Amos spoke, for David's honour was as his 
own, and Larry heard a pronounced Yankee's opinion, 
not only of all the inhabitants of the Emerald Isle, 
but of one in particular ! After freeing his mind, he 
threatened to free his house of Larry as a lodger, this 
being particularly unfortunate considering the near 
approach of one of that gentleman's times of retire- 
ment. 

Last night I thought the sky had again cleared, for 
Amos discovered that the postmaster did not suspect 
the cat episode, and as Larry had no friends in the 
village through which it might leak out, the old man 
seemed much relieved ; also, Larry apparently is not 
a harbourer of grievances. Within an hour, however, 
a second episode has further strained the relationship 
of lodger and host, and it has snapped. 

Though still quite stiff in the joints, Amos came 



TRANSPLANTING OF EVERGREENS 255 

over this morning to do some little tinkering in the 
barn camp, especially in strengthening the stays of 
the shower-bath tank, when, as he was on his knees 
fastening a brace to a post, in some inexplicable man- 
ner the string was pulled and the contents of the entire 
barrel of cold well-water were released, the first sprinkle 
so astonishing and bewildering poor Amos that he 
remained where he was, and so received a complete 
drenching. 

Bart and Larry were up in the woods getting the 
day's load of hemlocks, and I, hearing the spluttering 
and groans, went to Amos's rescue as well as I could, 
and together with Maria Maxwell got him to the 
kitchen, where hot tea and dry clothes should have 
completely revived him in spite of age. As, however, 
to-day, it seems, is the anniversary of a famous illness 
he acquired back in '64, on his return from the Civil 
War, the peculiarities of which he has not yet ceased 
proclaiming, he is evidently determined to celebrate it 
forthwith, so he has taken to his bed, groaning with 
a stitch in his side. The doctor has been telephoned, 
and Maria Maxwell, as usual bursting with energy, 
which on this occasion takes a form between that of 
a dutiful daughter and a genuine country neighbour, 
has gone over to Opal Farm to tidy up a bit until 



256 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

the doctor gives his decision and some native woman, 
agreeable to Amos's taste, can be found to look after 
the interesting yet aggravating crank. 

But this is not all. Amos declines to allow Larry 
to lodge in the house for another night, attributing 
the ducking to him, in spite of the fact that he was at 
least six miles away. In this both Bart and I think 
Amos right, for Larry's eye had a most inquiring ex- 
pression on his return, and I detected him slipping 
into the old barn at the first opportunity to see if the 
tank was empty, while Bart says that he has been 
talking to himself in a gleeful mood all the morning, 
and so he has decided that, as Larry has worked long 
enough to justify it, he will buy him a prepaid passage 
home to his daughter and see him off personally by 
to-morrow's steamer. As Amos will have none of 
Larry, to send the man into village lodgings would prob- 
ably hasten his downfall. I did hope to keep him 
until autumn, for he has taught me not a little garden- 
ing in a genial and irresponsible sort of way, and the 
rose garden is laid out in a manner that would do 
credit to a trained man, Larry having the rare com- 
bination of seeing a straight line and yet being able 
to turn a graceful curve. But even if Amos had been 
willing to allow him to sleep over one of his attacks, 



TRANSPLANTING OF EVERGREENS 257 

it would have been a dubious example for Barney, 
and in spite of the comfort he has been I now fully 
realize the limitations of so many of his race, at once 
witty, warm-hearted, soothing, and impossible; it 
is difficult not to believe what they say, even when 
you know they are lying, and this condition is equally 
demoralizing both to master and man. 

August 11. Anastasia wept behind her apron 
when Larry left, but Barney assumed a cheerfulness 
and interest in his work that he has never shown before. 
Bart says that in spite of a discrepancy of twenty-odd 
years he thinks that Larry, by his fund of stories and 
really wonderful jig dancing, was diverting Anastasia's 
thoughts, and the comfortable savings attached, from 
Barney, who, though doubtless a sober man and far 
more durable in many ways, is much less interesting 
an object for the daily contemplation of an emotional 
Irishwoman. 

While Bart was in town yesterday seeing Larry 
started on his journey, Maria and I, with the Infant 
tucked between in the buggy, went for an outing 
under the gentle guidance of Romeo, who through 
constant practice has become the most expert standing 
horse in the county. I'm only afraid that his owners 
on their return may not appreciate this accomplish- 



258 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

ment. Being on what Maria calls "a hunt for an- 
tiques," we drove in the direction of Newham village, 
which you know is away from railroads and has any 
number of old-time farms. We were not looking for 
spinning-wheels and andirons, but old-fashioned roses 
and peonies, especially the early double deep crimson 
variety that looks like a great Jack rose. We located 
a number of these in June and promised to return 
for our plunder in due season. Last year I bought 
some peony roots in August, and they throve so well, 
blooming this spring, that I think it is the best time 
for moving them. 

In one of the houses where we bought pink-and- 
white peonies the woman said she had a bed, as big as 
the barn-door, of "June" lilies, and that, as they were 
going to build a hen-house next autumn on the spot 
where they grew, she was going to lift some into one of 
her raised mounds (an awful construction, being a 
cross between a gigantic dirt pie and a grave), and said 
that I might have all the spare lily bulbs that I wanted 
if I would give her what she termed a "hatching" of 
gladiolus bulbs. Just at present the lilies have entirely 
disappeared, and nothing but bare earth is visible, but 
I think from the description that they must be the lovely 
Madonna lilies of grandmother's Virginia garden that 



TRANSPLANTING OF EVERGREENS 259 

made a procession from the tea-house quite down to 
the rose garden, like a bevy of slender young girls in 
confirmation array. If so, they do not take kindly 
to handling, and I have an indistinct remembrance 
of some rather unusual time of year when it must be 
done if necessary. 

Please let me know about this, for I can be of little 
use in the moving of the evergreens and I want some- 
thing to potter about in the garden. There are two 
places for a lily bed, but I am uncertain which is best 
until I hear from you. Either will have to be thor- 
oughly renovated in the matter of soil, so that I am 
anxious to start upon the right basis. One of these 
spots is in full sun, with a slope toward the orchard ; 
in the other the sun is cut off after one o'clock, though 
there are no overhanging branches ; there is also a third 
place, a squashy spot down in the bend of the old wall. 

On our return, toward evening, we met The Man 
from Everywhere driving down from the reservoir 
ground toward Opal Farm, a pink- cheeked young 
fellow of about twenty sharing the road wagon with 
him. As he has again been away for a few days, we 
drew up to exchange greetings and The Man said, rather 
aside, "I'm almost sorry that Larry fell from the skies 
to help out your gardening, for here is a young German 



2 6o THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

who has come from a distance, with a note from a 
man I know well, applying for work at the quarry; 
but there will be nothing suitable for him there for 
several months, for he's rather above the average. 
He would have done very well for you, as, though 
he speaks little English, I make out that his father 
was an under-forester in the fatherland. As it is, 
I'm taking him to the farm with me for the night and 
will try to think of how I may help him on in the 
morning." 

Instantly both Maria and I began to tell of Larry's 
defection in different keys, the young man meanwhile 
keeping up a deferential and most astonishing bowing 
and smiling. 

Having secured the seal of Bart's approval, Meyer 
has been engaged, and after to-day we must accustom 
our ears to a change from Larry's rich brogue to the 
juicy explosiveness of German; and worse yet, I must 
rack my brains for the mostly forgotten dialect of the 
schoolroom language that is learned with such pain 
and so quickly forgotten. 

I'm wondering very much about The Man's sudden 
return to Opal Farm and if it will interfere with 
Maria Maxwell's daily care of Amos Opie ; for, as it 
turns out, he is really ill, the chill resulting from Larry's 



TRANSPLANTING OF EVERGREENS 261 

prank having been the final straw, and no suitable 
woman having been found, who has volunteered to 
tend the old man in the emergency, but Maria ! That 
is, to the extent of taking him food and giving him 
medicines, for though in pain he is able to sit in an 
easy-chair. Maria certainly is capable, but so stupid 
about The Man. However, as the farm-house is now 
arranged as two dwellings, with the connecting door 
opening in the back hall and usually kept locked on 
Amos's side, she cannot possibly feel that she is putting 
herself in The Marts way ! 



XIII 
LILIES AND THEIR WHIMS 

(Barbara Campbell to Mary Penrose) 
Oaklands, August 18. As a suitable text for this 
chronicle, as well as an unanswerable argument for 
its carrying out, combined with a sort of premium, 
I'm sending you to-day, freight paid, a barrel of lily- 
of-the-valley roots, all vigorous and with many next 
year's flowering pips attached. 

No, — I hear your decorous protest, — I have not 
robbed myself, neither am I giving up the growing of 
this most exquisite of spring flowers, whose fragrance 
penetrates the innermost fastnesses of the memory, 
yet is never obtrusive. Simply my long border was 
full to overflowing and last season some of the lily 
bells were growing smaller. When this happens, 
as it does every half a dozen years, I dig two eight- 
inch trenches down the bed's entire length, and taking 
out the matted roots, fill the gap with rich soil, adding 
the plants thus dispossessed to my purse of garden 

wampum, which this time falls into your lap entire. 

262 



LILIES AND THEIR WHIMS 263 

Of the treatment of the little flower, that is erroneously 
supposed to feast only upon leaf-mould in the deep 
shade, you shall hear later. 

By all means begin your lily bed now, for the one 
season at which the Madonna lily resents removal 
the least is during the August resting time. Then, 
if you lift her gently while she sleeps, do not let the 
cool earth breath that surrounds her dry away, and 
bed her suitably, . she will awaken and in a month put 
forth a leafy crown of promise to be fulfilled next 
June. Madonna does not like the shifting and lift- 
ing that falls to the lot of so many garden bulbs owing 
to the modern requirements that make a single flower 
bed often a thing of three seasonal changes. Many 
bulbs, many moods and whims. Hyacinths and early 
tulips blossom their best the first spring after their 
autumn planting (always supposing that the bob- 
tailed meadow- mice, who travel in the mole tunnels, 
thereby giving them a bad reputation, have not feasted 
on the tender heart buds in the interval). 

The auratum lily of the gorgeous gold- banded and 
ruby-studded flower exults smilingly for a season or 
two and then degenerates sadly. 

Madonna, if she be healthy on her coming, and is 
given healthy soil free from hot taint of manure, will 



264 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

live with you for years and love you and give you every 
season increasing yield of silver-white-crowned stalks, 
at the very time that you need them to blend with 
your royal blue delphiniums. But this will be only 
if you obey the warning of "hands and spade off." 

The three species of the well-known recurved Japan 
lily — speciosum roseum, s. rubrum, and s. album — 
have the same love of permanence; likewise the lily- 
of-the-valley and all the tribe of border narcissi and 
daffodils ; so if you wish to keep them at their best, you 
must not only give them bits of ground all of their 
own, but study their individual needs and idiosyn- 
crasies. 

Lilies as a comprehensive term, — the Biblical 
grass of the field, — as far as concerns a novice or the 
Garden, You, and I, may be made to cover the typical 
lilies themselves, tulips, narcissi (which are of the 
amaryllis flock), and lilies- of- the- valley, a tribe by 
itself. You will wish to include all of them in your 
garden, but you must limit yourself to the least whim- 
sical varieties on account of your purse, the labor 
entailed, and the climate. 

Of the pieces of ground that you describe, take 
that in partial shade for your Madonna lilies and their 
kin, and that in the open sun for your lilies-of-the- 



LILIES AND THEIR WHIMS 265 

valley, while I would keep an earth border free from 
silver birches, on the sunny side of your tumble-down 
stone- wall rockery, for late tulips and narcissi; and 
grape hyacinths, scillas, trilliums, the various Solo- 
mon's seals, bellworts, etc., can be introduced in 
earth pockets between the rocks if, in case of the 
deeper-rooted kinds, connection be had with the earth 
below. 

It is much more satisfactory to plant spring bulbs 
in this way, — in groups, or irregular lines and masses, 
where they may bloom according to their own sweet 
will, and when they vanish for the summer rest, scat- 
ter a little portulaca or sweet alyssum seed upon the 
soil to prevent too great bareness, — than to set them in 
formal beds, from which they must either be removed 
when their blooming time is past, or else one runs the 
risk of spoiling them by planting deep-rooted plants 
among them. 

The piece of sunny ground in the angled dip of the 
old wall, which you call "decidedly squashy," inter- 
ests me greatly, for it seems the very place for Iris of 
the Japanese type, — lilies that are not lilies in the exact 
sense, except by virtue of being built on the rule of 
three and having grasslike or parallel- veined leaves. 
But these closely allied plant families and their differ- 



266 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

ences are a complex subject that we need not discuss, 
the whole matter being something akin to one of the 
dear old Punch stories that adorn Evan's patriotic 
scrap-book. 

A railway porter, puzzled as in what class of freight 
an immense tortoise shall be placed, as dogs are the 
only recognized standard, pauses, gazing at it as 
he scratches his head, and mutters, "Cats is dogs 
and rabbits is dogs, but this 'ere hanimal's a hin- 
sect!" The Iris may be, in this respect, a "hinsect," 
but we will reckon it in with the lilies. 

The culture of this Japan Iris is very simple and 
well worth while, for the species comes into bloom in 
late June and early July, when the German and other 
kinds are through. I should dig the wet soil from 
the spot of which you speak, for all muck is not good 
for this Iris, and after mixing it with some good loam 
and well- rotted cow manure replace it and plant the 
clumps of Iris two feet apart, for they will spread 
wonderfully. In late autumn they should have a 
top dressing of manure and a covering of corn stalks, 
but, mind, water must not stand on your Iris bed in win- 
ter; treating them as hardy plants does not war- 
rant their being plunged into water ice. It is almost 
impossible, however, to give them too much water in 



LILIES AND THEIR WHIMS 267 

June and July, when the great flowers of rainbow 
hues, spreading to a size that covers two open hands, 
cry for drink to sustain the exhaustion of their mar- 
vellous growth. So if your "squashy spot" is made 
so by spring rains, all is well ; if not, it must be drained 
in some easy way, like running a length of clay pipe 
beneath, so that the overplus of water will flow off when 
the Iris growth cannot absorb it. 

Ah me ! the very mention of this flower calls up 
endless visions of beauty. Iris — the flower of my- 
thology, history, and one might almost say science as 
well, since its outline points to the north on the face 
of the mariner's compass; the flower that in the 
dawn of recorded beauty antedates the rose, the frag- 
ments of the scattered rainbow of creation that rests 
upon the garden, not for a single hour or day or week, 
but for a long season. The early bulbous Iris his- 
triodes begins the season in March, and the Persian 
Iris follows in April. In May comes the sturdy Ger- 
man Iris of old gardens, of few species but every one 
worthy, and to be relied upon in mass of bloom and 
sturdy leafage to rival even the peony in decorative 
effect. Next the meadows are ribboned by our own 
blue flags; and the English Iris follows and in June 
and July meets the sumptuous Iris of Japan at its 



268 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

blooming season, for there seems to be no country so 
poor as to be without an Iris. 

There are joyous flowers of gold and royal blue, 
the Flower de Luce (Flower of Louis) of regal France, 
and sombre flowers draped in deep green and black 
and dusky purple, "The widow" (Iris tuberosa) and 
the Chalcedonian Iris (Iris Susiana), taking its name 
from the Persian Susa. Iris Florentina by its powdered 
root yields the delicate violet perfume orris, a corrup- 
tion doubtless of Iris. 

Many forms of root as well as blossom has the Iris, 
tuberous, bulbous, fibrous, and if the rose may have 
a garden to itself, why may not the Iris in combina- 
tion with its sister lilies have one also? And when 
my eyes rest upon a bed of these flowers or upon a 
single blossom, I long to be a poet. 

***** * * 

Now to begin : will your shady place yield you a bed 
four feet in width by at least twenty in length? If 
so, set Barney to work with pick and spade. The 
top, I take it, is old turf not good enough to use for 
edging, so after removing this have it broken into 
bits and put in a heap by itself. When the earth 
beneath is loosened, examine it carefully. If it is 
good old mellow loam without the pale yellow colour 



LILIES AND THEIR WHIMS 269 

that denotes the sterile, undigested soil unworked by 
roots or earthworms, have it taken out to eighteen 
inches in depth and shovelled to one side. When the 
bad soil is reached, which will be soon, have it removed 
so that the pit will be three feet below the level. 

Next, let Barney collect any old broken bits of 
flower-pots, cobbles, or small stones of any kind, and 
fill up the hole for a foot, and let the broken turf come 
on top of this. If possible, beg or buy of Amos Opie 
a couple of good loads of the soil from the meadow 
bottom where the red bell- lilies grow, and mix this 
with the good loam, together with a scattering of bone, 
before replacing it. The bed should not only be full, 
but well rounded. Grade it nicely with a rake and 
wait a week or until rain has settled it before plant- 
ing. When setting these lilies, let there be six inches 
of soil above the bulb, and sprinkle the hole into which 
it goes with fresh-water sand mixed with powdered 
sulphur. 

This bed will be quite large enough for a beginning 
and will allow you four rows of twenty bulbs in a row, 
with room for them to spread naturally into a close 
mass, if so desired. Or better yet, do not put them in 
stiff rows, but in groups, alternating the early- flowering 
with the late varieties. A row of German Iris at the 



270 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

back of this bed will give solidity and the sturdy foliage 
make an excellent windbreak in the blooming season. 
If your friendly woman in the back country will give 
you two dozen of the Madonna lily bulbs, group them 
in fours, leaving a short stake in the middle of each 
group that you may know its exact location, for the 
other lilies you cannot obtain before October, unless 
you chance to find them in the garden of some near-by 
florist or friend. These are — 

Lilium speciosum album — white recurved. 

Lilium speciosum rubrum — spotted with ruby-red. 

Lilium speciosum roseum — spotted with rose-pink. 
All three flower in August and September, rubrum 
being the latest, and barring accidents increase in size 
and beauty with each year. 

In spite of the fact of their fickleness, I would buy 
a dozen or two of the auratum lilies, for even if they 
last but for a single year, they are so splendid that we 
can almost afford to treat them as a fleeting spectacle. 
As the speciosum lilies (I wish some one would give 
them a more gracious name — we call them curved- 
shell lilies here among ourselves) do not finish flower- 
ing sometimes until late in September, the bulbs are 
not ripe in time to be sold through the stores, until 
there is danger of the ground being frozen at night. 




Speciosum Lilies in the Shade. 



LILIES AND THEIR WHIMS 271 

On the other hand, if purchased in spring, unless the 
bulbs have been wintered with the greatest care in 
damp, not wet, peat moss, or sand, they become so 
withered that their vitality is seriously impaired. 
There are several dealers who make a specialty of 
thus wintering lily bulbs, 1 and if you buy from one of 
these, I advise spring planting. 

If, however, for any reason you wish to finish your 
bed this fall, after planting and covering each bulb, 
press a four or five inch flower-pot lightly into the 
soil above it. This will act as a partial watershed 
to keep the drip of rain or snow water from settling in 
the crown of the bulb and decaying the bud. Or if 
you have plenty of old boards about the place, they 
may be put on the bed and slightly raised in the centre, 
like a pitched roof, so as to form a more complete water- 
shed, and the winter covering of leaves, salt, hay, or 
litter, free of manure, can be built upon this. Cro- 
cuses, snowdrops, and scillas make a charming border 
for a lily bed and may be also put between the lilies 
themselves to lend colour early in the season. 

To cover your bed thoroughly, so that it will keep 
out cold and damp and not shut it in, is a must be of 
successful lily culture. Have you ever tried to grow 

1 F. H. Horsford of Charlotte, Vt., is very reliable in this matter. 



272 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

our hardiest native lilies like the red- wood, Turk's 
cap, and Canada bell-lily in an open border where 
the porous earth, filled by ice crystal, was raised by 
the frost to the consistency of bread sponge? I did 
this not many years ago and the poor dears looked 
pinched and woebegone and wholly unlike their 
sturdy sisters of meadow and upland wood edges. 
Afterward, in trying to dig some of these lilies from 
their native soil, I discovered why they were uncom- 
fortable in the open borders ; the Garden, You, and I 
would have to work mighty hard to find a winter 
blanket for the lily bed to match the turf of wild 
grasses sometimes half a century old. 

Many other beautiful and possible lilies there are 
besides these four, but these are to be taken as first 
steps in lily lore, as it were ; for to make anything like 
a general collection of this flower is a matter of more 
serious expense and difficulty than to collect roses, 
owing to the frailness of the material and the different 
climatic conditions under which the rarer species, 
especially those from India and the sea islands, origi- 
nated ; but given anything Japanese and a certain cos- 
mopolitan intelligence seems bred in it that carries a 
reasonable hope of success under new conditions. 

We have half a dozen species of beautiful native 



LILIES AND THEIR WHIMS 273 

lilies, but like some of our most exquisite ferns they 
depend much for their attractiveness upon the set- 
ting their natural haunts offer, and I do not like to 
see them caged, as it were, within strict garden 
boundaries. 

The red wood-lily should be met among the great 
brakes of a sandy wood edge, where white leafless 
wands of its cousin, star-grass, or colic root, wave 
above it, and the tall late meadow-rue and white an- 
gelica fringe the background. 

The Canada bell-lily needs the setting of meadow 
grasses to veil its long, stiff stalks, while the Turk's-cap 
lily seems the most at home of all in garden surround- 
ings, but it only gains its greatest size in the deep 
meadows, where, without being wet, there is a certain 
moisture beneath the deep old turf, and this turf itself 
not only keeps out frost, but moderates the sun's rays 
in their transit to the ground. 

Two lilies there are that, escaping from gardens, 
in many places have become half wild — the brick- 
red, black-spotted tiger lily with recurved flowerets, 
after the shape of the Japanese roseum, rubrum, and 
album, being also a native of Japan and China, and 
the tawny orange day lily, that is found in masses 
about old cellars and waysides, with its tubular flowers, 



274 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

held on leafless stems, springing from a matted bed of 
leaves. This day lily (hemerocallis fulva) is sister 
to the familiar and showy lemon lily of old gardens 
(hemerocallis flava). If you have plenty of room by 
your wall, I should lodge a few good bunches by it 
when you find some in a location where digging is 
possible. It is a decorative flower, but hardly worthy 
of good garden soil. The same may be said of the 
tiger lily, on account of the very inharmonious shade 
of red it wears ; yet if you have a half- wild nook, some- 
where that a dozen bulbs of it may be tucked in com- 
pany with a bunch of the common tall white phlox 
that flowers at the same time, you will have a bit of 
colour that will care for itself. 

The lemon lily should have a place in the hardy 
border well toward the front row and be given enough 
room to spread into a comfortable circle after the 
manner of the white plantain lily (Funkia sub cor data). 
This last lily, another of Japan's contributions to the 
hardy garden, blooms from August until frost and 
unlike most of the lily tribe is pleased if well- rotted 
manure is deeply dug into its resting-place. 

As with humanity the high and lowly born are sub- 
ject to the same diseases, so is it with the lily tribe, 
and because you choose the sturdiest and consequently 



LILIES AND THEIR WHIMS 275 

least expensive species for your garden, do not think 
that you may relax your vigilance. 

There is a form of fungous mould that attacks the 
bulbs of lilies without rhyme or reason and is the in- 
sidious tuberculosis of the race. Botrytis cinerea is 
its name and it seizes upon stalk and leaves in the form 
of spots that are at first yellow and then deepen in 
colour, until finally, having sapped the vitality of the 
plant, it succumbs. 

Cold, damp, insufficient protection in winter, all 
serve to render the lily liable to its attacks, but the 
general opinion among the wise is that the universal 
overstimulation of lilies by fertilizers during late 
years, especially of the white lilies used for church 
and other decorative purposes, has undermined the 
racial constitution and made it prone to attacks of 
the enemy. Therefore, if you please, Mary Penrose, 
sweet soil, sulphur, sand, and good winter covering, 
if you would not have your lily bed a consumptives' 
hospital ! 

Some lilies are also susceptible to sunstroke. When 
growing in the full fight and heat of the sun, and the 
buds are ready to open, suddenly the flowers, leaves, 
and entire stalk will wither, as when in spring a tulip 
collapses and we find that a meadow-mouse has nipped 



276 THE Gx\RDEN, YOU, AND I 

it in the core. But with the lily the blight comes from 
above, and the only remedy is to plant in half shade. 

On the other hand the whims of the flower require 
that this be done carefully, for if the scorching sun is 
an evil, a soaking, sopping rain, coming at the height 
of the blooming season and dripping from over- 
hanging boughs, is equally so. The gold-and-copper 
pollen turns to rusty tears that mar the petals of satin 
ivory or inlaid enamel, and a sickly transparency 
that bodes death comes to the crisp, translucent flower ! 

"What a pother for a bed of flowers!" I hear you 
say, "draining, subsoiling, sulphuring, sanding, cov- 
ering, humouring, and then sunstroke or consump- 
tion at the end!" So be it, but when success does 
come, it is something worth while, for to be success- 
ful with these lilies is "aiming the star" in garden 
experience. 

The plantain lilies and hemerocallis seem free from 
all of these whims and diseases, but it is when we 
come to the lily-of-the-valley that we have the compen- 
sation for our tribulations with the royal lilies of pure 
blood. 

The lily-of-the-valley asks deep, very rich soil in 
the open sun; if a wall or hedge protects it from the 
north, so much the better. I do not know why people 



LILIES AND THEIR WHIMS 277 

preach ■ dense shade for this flower ; possibly because 
they prefer leaves to flowers, or else that they are of 
the sheeplike followers of tradition instead of prac- 
tical gardeners of personal experience. One thing 
grows to perfection in the garden of this commuter's 
wife, and that is lilies-of-the-valley, and shade knows 
them not between eight in the morning and five at 
night, and we pick and pick steadily for two weeks, 
for as the main bed gives out, there are strips here and 
there in cooler locations that retard the early growth, 
but never any overhanging branches. 

In starting a wholly new bed, as you are doing, it 
is best to separate the tangled roots into small bunches, 
seeing to it that a few buds or "pips" remain with 
each, and plant in long rows a foot apart, three rows 
to a four-foot bed. Be sure to bury a well-tarred plank 
a foot in width edgewise at the outer side of the bed, 
unless you wish, in a couple of years' time, to have this 
enterprising flower walk out and about the surrounding 
garden and take it for its own. Be sure to press the 
roots in thoroughly and cover with three inches of 
soil. 

In December cover the bed with rotten cow manure 
for several inches and rake off the coarser part in April, 
taking care not to break the pointed "pips" that will 



278 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

be starting, and you will have a forest of cool green 
leaves and such flowers as it takes much money to 
buy. Not the first season, of course, but after that — 
forever, if you thin out and fertilize properly. 

In the back part of your lily- of- the- valley bed plant 
two or three rows of the lovely poets' narcissus (poeti- 
cus). It opens its white flowers of the "pheasant's 
eye" cup at the same time as the lilies bloom, it grows 
sufficiently tall to make a good upward gradation, 
and it likes to be let severely alone. But do not for- 
get in covering in the fall to put leaves over the 
narcissi instead of manure. Of other daffodils and 
narcissi that I have found very satisfactory, besides the 
good mixtures offered by reliable houses at only a dollar 
or a dollar and a quarter a hundred (the poets' nar- 
cissi only costing eighty cents a hundred for good 
bulbs), are Trumpet Major, Incomparabilis, the old- 
fashioned "daffy," and the monster yellow trumpet 
narcissus, Van Sion. 

The polyanthus narcissi, carrying their many flowers 
in heads at the top of the stalk, are what is termed 
half hardy and they are more frequently seen in flo- 
rists' windows than in gardens. I have found them 
hardy if planted in a sheltered spot, covered with 
slanted boards and leaves, which should not be removed 




The Poet's Narcissus. 



LILIES AND THEIR WHIMS 279 

before April, as the spring rain and winds, I am con- 
vinced, do more to kill the species than winter cold. 
The flowers are heavily fragrant, like gardenias, and 
are almost too sweet for the house ; but they, together 
with violets, give the garden the opulence of odour 
before the lilacs are open, or the heliotropes that are 
to be perfumers- in- chief in summer have graduated 
from thumb pots in the forcing houses. 

Unless one has a large garden and a gardener who 
can plant and tend parterres of spring colour, I do 
not set much value upon outdoor hyacinths; they 
must be lifted each year and often replaced, as the 
large bulbs soon divide into several smaller ones with 
the flowers proportionately diminished. To me their 
mission is, to be grown in pots, shallow pans, or glasses 
on the window ledge, for winter and spring comfort- 
ers, and I use the early tulips much in the same way, 
except for a cheerful line of them, planted about the 
foundation of the house, that when in bloom seems lit- 
erally to lift home upon the spring wings of resurrection ! 

All my tulip enthusiasm is centred in the late 
varieties, and chief among these come the fascinating 
and fantastic "parrots." 

When next I have my garden savings-bank well 
filled, I am going to make a collection of these tulips 



280 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

and guard them in a bed underlaid with stout-meshed 
wire netting, so that no mole may leave a tunnel for 
the wicked tulip-eating meadow-mouse. 

It is these late May-flowering tulips of long stalks, 
like wands of tall perennials, that you can gather in 
your arms and arrange in your largest jars with a 
sense at once combined of luxury and artistic joy. 

Better begin as I did by buying them in mixture; 
the species you must choose are the bizarre, bybloems, 
parrots, breeders, Darwin tulips, and the rose and 
white, together with a general mixture of late singles. 
Five dollars will buy you fifty of each of the seven 
kinds, three hundred and fifty bulbs all told and enough 
for a fine display. The Darwin tulips yield beautiful 
shades of violet, carmine, scarlet, and brown; the 
bizarres, many curious effects in stripes and flakes; 
the rose and white, delicate frettings and margins of 
pink on a white ground ; but the parrots have petals 
fringed, twisted, beaked, poised curiously upon 
the stalks, splashed with reds, yellows, and green, 
and to come suddenly upon a mass of them in the 
garden is to think for a brief moment that a group 
of unknown birds blown from the tropics in a forced 
migration have alighted for rest upon the bending 
tulip stalks. 



XIV 

FRAGRANT FLOWERS AND LEAVES 

(Mary Penrose to Barbara Campbell) 
Woodridge, August 26. The heliotrope is in the 
perfection of bloom and seems to draw perfume from 
the intense heat of the August days only to release it 
again as the sun sets, while as long as daylight lasts 
butterflies of all sizes, shapes, and colours are flutter- 
ing about the flowers until the bed is like the transfor- 
mation scene of a veritable dance of fairies ! 

Possibly you did not know that I have a heliotrope 
bed planted at "the very last moment. I had never 
before seen a great mass of heliotrope growing all 
by itself until I visited your garden, and ever since 
I have wondered why more people have not discov- 
ered it. I think that I wrote you anent hens that 
the ancient fowl-house of the place had been at the 
point where there was a gap in the old wall below the 
knoll, and that the wind swept up through it from 
the river, across the Opal Farm meadows, and into 
the windows of the dining room ? The most impossible 



282 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

place for a fowl-house, but exactly the location, as The 
Man from Everywhere suggested, for a bed of sweet 
odours. 

I expected to do nothing with it this season until 
one day Larry, the departed, in a desire to use some 
of the domestic guano with which the rough cellar 
of the old building was filled, carted away part of it, 
and supplying its place with loam, dug over and 
straightened out the irregular space, which is quite 
six feet wide by thirty long. 

The same day, on going to a near-by florist's for 
celery plants, I found that he had a quantity of little 
heliotropes in excess of his needs, that had remained 
unpotted in the sand of the cutting house, where they 
had spindled into sickly-looking weeds. In a mo- 
ment of the horticultural gambling that will seize one, 
I offered him a dollar for the lot, which he accepted 
readily, for it was the last of June and the poor 
things would probably have been thrown out in a day 
or two. 

I took them home and spent a whole morning in 
separating and cutting off the spindling tops to an 
even length of six inches. Literally there seemed to 
be no end to the plants, and when I counted them I 
found that I had nearly a hundred and fifty heliotropes, 



FRAGRANT FLOWERS AND LEAVES 283 

which, after rejecting the absolutely hopeless, gave 
me six rows for the bed. 

For several weeks my speculation in heliotropes 
was a subject of much mirth between Bart and my- 
self, and the place was anything but a bed of sweet 
odours ! The poor things lost the few leaves they had 
possessed and really looked as if they had been 
haunted by the ghosts of all the departed chickens 
that had gone from the fowl-house to the block. 
Then we had some wet weather, followed by growing 
summer heat, and I did not visit the bed for perhaps 
a week or more, when I rubbed my eyes and pinched 
myself; for it was completely covered with a mass of 
vigorous green, riotous in its profusion, here and 
there showing flower buds, and ever since it is one of 
the places to which I go to feast my eyes and nose 
when in need of garden encouragement ! Another 
year I shall plant the heliotrope in one of the short 
cross-walk borders of the old garden, where we may 
also see it from the dining room, and use the larger 
bed for the more hardy sweet things, as I shall prob- 
ably never be able to buy so many heliotrope plants 
again for so little money. 

Now also I have a definite plan for a large border 
of fragrant flowers and leaves. I have been on a 



284 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

journey, and, having spent three whole days from 
home, I am able for once to tell you something 
instead of endlessly stringing questions together. 

We also have been to the Cortrights' at Gray Rocks, 
and through a whiff of salt air, a touch of friendly 
hands, much conversation, and a drive to Coningsby 
(a village back from the shore peopled by the de- 
scendants of seafarers who, having a little property, 
have turned mildly to farming), we have received 
fresh inspiration. 

You did not overestimate the originality of the 
Cortrights' seaside garden, and even after your intimate 
description, it contained several surprises in the shape 
of masses of the milkweeds that flourish in sandy 
soil, especially the dull pink, and the orange, about 
which the brick-red monarch butterflies were hover- 
ing in great flocks. Neither did you tell me of the 
thistles that flank the bayberry hedge. I never real- 
ized what a thing of beauty a thistle might be when 
encouraged and allowed room to develop. Some 
of the plants of the common deep purple thistle, that 
one associates with the stunted growths of dusty 
roadsides, stood full five feet high, each bush as clear 
cut and erect as a candelabrum of fine metal work, 
while another group was composed of a pale yellow 



FRAGRANT FLOWERS AND LEAVES 285 

species with a tinge of pink in the centre set in very 
handsome silvery leaves. I had never before seen 
these yellow thistles, but Lavinia Cortright says that 
they are very plentiful in the dry ground back of the 
marshes, where the sand has been carried in drifts 
both by wind and tide. 

The table and house decorations the day that we 
arrived were of thistles blended with the deep yellow 
blossoms of the downy false foxglove or Gerardia 
and the yellow false indigo that looks at a short dis- 
tance like a dwarf bush pea. 

We drove to Coningsby, as I supposed to see some 
gay little gardens, fantastic to the verge of awfulness, 
that had caught Aunt Lavinia's eye. In one the earth 
for the chief bed was contained in a surf-boat that 
had become unseaworthy from age, and not only 
was it filled to the brim, but vines of every description 
trailed over the sides. 

A neighbour opposite, probably a garden rival of 
the owner of the boat but lacking aquatic furniture, 
had utilized a single-seated cutter which, painted blue 
of the unmerciful shade that fights with everything 
it approaches, was set on an especially green bit of 
side lawn, surrounded by a heavy row of conch shells, 
and the box into which the seat had been turned, as 



286 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

well as the bottom of the sleigh itself, was filled with 
a jumble of magenta petunias and flame- coloured 
nasturtiums. 

After we had passed down a village street a quarter 
of a mile long, bordered on either side by floral com- 
binations of this description, the sight began to pall, 
and I wondered how it was possible that any flowers 
well watered and cared for could produce such a feel- 
ing of positive aversion as well as eye-strained fatigue; 
also, if this was all that the Cortrights had driven us 
many miles to see, when it was so much more in- 
teresting to lounge on either of the porches of their 
own cottage, the one commanding the sea and the 
other the sand garden, the low dunes, and the marsh 
meadows. 

"It is only half a mile farther on," said Aunt La- 
vinia, quick to feel that we were becoming bored, with- 
out our having apparently given any sign to that effect. 

"It! What is U?" asked Bart, while I, without 
shame it is confessed, having a ravenous appetite, 
through outdoor living, hoped that it was some quaint 
and neat little inn that "refreshed travellers," as it 
was expressed in old-time wording. 

"How singular!" ejaculated Aunt Lavinia; "I 
thought I told you last night when we were in the 



FRAGRANT FLOWERS AND LEAVES 287 

garden — well, it must have been in a dream instead. 
It is the garden of Mrs. Marchant, wholly of fragrant 
things ; it is on the little cross-road, beyond that strip 
of woods up there," and she waved toward a slight 
rise in the land that was regarded as a hill of consid- 
erable importance in this flat country. 

"It does not contain merely a single bed of sweet 
odours like Barbara's and mine, but is a garden an 
acre in extent, where everything admitted has fra- 
grance, either in flower or leaf. We chanced upon it 
quite by accident, Martin and I, when driving ourselves 
down from Oaklands, across country, as it were, to 
Gray Rocks, by keeping to shady lanes, byways, and 
pent roads, where it was often necessary to take down 
bars and sometimes verge on trespassing by going 
through farmyards in order to continue our way. 

"After traversing a wood road of unusual beauty, 
where everything broken and unsightly had been 
carefully removed that ferns and wild shrubs 
might have full chance of life, we came suddenly 
upon a white picket gate covered by an arched trellis, 
beyond which in the vista could be seen a modest 
house of the real colonial time, set in the midst of a 
garden. 

"At once we realized the fact that the lane was also 



288 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

a part of the garden in that it was evidently the daily 
walk of some one who loved nature, and we looked 
about for a way of retracing our steps. At the same 
moment two female figures approached the gate from 
the other side. At the distance at which we were I 
could only see that one was tall and slender, was 
dressed all in pure white, and crowned by a mass of 
hair to match, while the other woman was short and 
stocky, and the way in which she opened the gate and 
held it back told that whatever her age might be she 
was an attendant, though probably an intimate one. 

"In another moment they discovered us, and as 
Martin alighted from the vehicle to apologize for our 
intrusion the tall figure immediately retreated to the 
garden, so quickly and without apparent motion that 
we were both startled, for the way of moving is pecul- 
iar to those whose feet do not really tread the earth 
after the manner of their fellows; and before we had 
quite recovered ourselves the stout woman had ad- 
vanced and we saw by the pleasant smile her round 
face wore that she was not aggrieved at the intrusion 
but seemed pleased to meet human beings in that 
out-of-the-way place rather than rabbits, many of 
which had scampered away as we came down the 
lane. 



FRAGRANT FLOWERS AND LEAVES 289 

"Martin explained our dilemma and asked if we 
might gain the highway without retracing our steps. 
The woman hesitated a moment, and then said, ' If you 
come through the gate and turn sharp to the right, 
you can go out across the apple orchard by taking 
down a single set of bars, only you'll have to lead your 
horse, sir, for the trees are set thick and are heavy 
laden. I'd let you cross the bit of grass to the drive 
by the back gate yonder but that it would grieve 
Mrs. Marchant to see the turf so much as pressed 
with a wheel; she'd feel and know it somehow, even 
if she didn't see it.' 

'"Mrs. Marchant! Not Mrs. Chester Marchant?' 
cried Martin, while the far-away echo of something 
recalled by the name troubled the ears of my memory. 

" ' Yes, sir, the very same ! Did you know Dr. Mar- 
chant, sir? The minute I laid eyes on you two I thought 
you were of her kind ! ' replied the woman, pointing 
backward over her shoulder and settling herself 
against the shaft and side of Brown Tom, the horse, 
as if expecting and making ready for a comfortable 
chat. 

"As she stood thus I could take a full look at her 
without intrusiveness. Apparently well over sixty 
years old, and her face lines telling of many troubles, 



290 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

yet she had not a gray hair in her head and her poise 
was of an independent landowner rather than an 
occupier of another's home. I also saw at a glance 
that whatever her present position might be, she had 
not been born in service, but was probably a native 
of local importance, who, for some reason perfectly 
satisfactory to herself, was 'accommodating.' 

'"Dr. Marchant, Dr. Russell, and I were college 
mates,' said Martin, briefly, 'and after he and his son 
died so suddenly I was told that his widow was men- 
tally ill and that none could see her, and later that she 
had died, or else the wording was so that I inferred 
as much,' and the very recollection seemed to set Mar- 
tin dreaming. And I did not wonder, for there had 
never been a more brilliant and devoted couple than 
Abbie and Chester Marchant, and I still remember 
the shock of it when word came that both father and 
son had been killed by the same runaway accident, 
though it was nearly twenty years ago. 

"'She was ill, sir, was Mrs. Marchant; too ill to 
see anybody. For a long time she wouldn't believe 
that the accident had happened, and when she really 
sensed it, she was as good as dead for nigh five years. 
One day some of her people came to me — 'twas 
the year after my own husband died — and asked 



FRAGRANT FLOWERS AND LEAVES 291 

if I would take a lady and her nurse here to live with 
me for the summer. They told me of her sickness 
and how she was always talking of some cottage in 
a garden of sweet-smelling flowers where she had lived 
one happy summer with her husband and her boy, 
and they placed the house as mine. 

'"Her folks said the doctors thought if she could 
get back here for a time that it might help her. Then 
I recollected that ten years before, when I went up to 
Maine to visit my sister, I'd rented the place, just as 
it stood, to folks of the name of Marchant, a fine couple 
that didn't look beyond each other unless 'twas at 
their son. In past times my grandmother had an old- 
country knack of raising healing herbs and all sorts 
of sweet-smelling things, along with farm truck, so 
that folks came from all about to buy them and doctors 
too, for such things weren't sold so much in shops in 
those days as they are now, and so this place came to 
be called the Herb Farm. After that it was sold off, 
little by little, until the garden, wood lane, and orchard 
is about all that's left. 

" 'I was lonesome and liked the idea of company, 
and besides I was none too well fixed ; yet I dreaded a 
mournful widow that wasn't all there anyway, accord- 
ing to what they said, but I thought I'd try. Well, 



292 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

sir, she come, and that first week I thought I'd never 
stand it, she talked and wrung her hands so continual. 
But one day what do you think happened ? I chanced 
to pick a nosegay, not so much fine flowers perhaps 
as good-smelling leaves and twigs, and put it in a little 
pitcher in her room. 

"'It was like witchcraft the way it worked; the 
smell of those things seemed to creep over her like 
some drugs might and she changed. She stopped 
moaning and went out into the garden and touched 
all the posies with her fingers, as if she was shaking 
hands, and all of a sudden it seemed, by her talk, 
as if her dead were back with her again ; and on every 
other point she's been as clear and ladylike as pos- 
sible ever since, and from that day she cast off her 
black clothes as if wearing 'em was all through a 
mistake. 

'"The doctors say it's something to do with the 
'sociation of smells, for that season they spent in my 
cottage was the only vacation Dr. Marchant had taken 
in years, and they say it was the happiest time in 
her life, fussing about among my old-fashioned posies 
with him ; and somehow in her mind he's got fixed 
there among those posies, and every year she plants 
more and more of them, and what friends of hers she 



FRAGRANT FLOWERS AND LEAVES 293 

ever speaks of she remembers by some flowers they 
wore or liked. 

'"Well, as it turned out, her trustees have bought 
my place out and fixed it over, and here we live together, 
I may say, both fairly content ! 

" ' Come in and see her, won't you ? It'll do no harm. 
Cortright, did you say your name was?' and before 
we could retreat, throwing Brown Tom's loose check- 
rein across the pickets of the gate, she led us to where 
the tall woman, dressed in pure white, stood under 
the trees, a look of perfectly calm expectancy in the 
wonderful dark eyes that made such a contrast to her 
coils of snow-white hair. 

'"Cortright! Martin Cortright, is it not?' she 
said immediately, as her companion spoke the sur- 
name. 'And your wife? I had not heard that you 
were married, but I remember you well, Lavinia Dor- 
man, and your city garden, and the musk-rose bush 
that ailed because of having too little sun. Chester 
will be so sorry to miss you ; he is seldom at home in 
the mornings, for he takes long walks with our son. He 
is having the first entire half year's vacation he has 
allowed himself since our marriage. But you will 
always find him in the garden in the afternoon; he 
is so fond of fragrant flowers, and he is making new 



294 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

studies of herbs and such things, for he believes that 
in spite of some great discoveries it will be proven 
that the old simples are the most enduring medicines.' 

"As she spoke she was leading the way, with that 
peculiar undulating progress, like a cloud blown 
over the earth's surface, that I had noticed at first. 
Then we came out from under the shade of the trees 
into the garden enclosure and I saw borders and beds, 
but chiefly borders, stretching and curving everywhere, 
screening all the fences, approaching the house, and 
when almost there retreating in graceful lines into 
the shelter of the trees. The growth had the luxu- 
riance of a jungle, and yet there was nothing weedy 
or awry about it, and as the breeze blew toward us 
the combination of many odours, both pungent and 
sweet, was almost overpowering. 

"'You very seldom wore a buttonhole flower, but 
when you did it was a safrano bud or else a white jas- 
mine,' Mrs. Marchant said, wheeling suddenly and 
looking at Martin with a gaze that did not stop where 
he stood, but went through and beyond him ; ' it was 
Dr. Russell who always wore a pink ! See ! I have 
both here!' and going up to a tea-rose bush, grown 
to the size of a shrub and lightly fastened to the side 
of the house, she gathered a few shell-like buds and 



FRAGRANT FLOWERS AND LEAVES 295 

a moment later pulled down a spray of the jasmine 
vine that festooned a window, as we see it in England 
but never here, and carefully cut off a cluster of its 
white stars by aid of a pair of the long, slender flower- 
picking scissors that hung from her belt by a ribbon, 
twisted the stems together, and placed them in Martin's 
buttonhole almost without touching it. 

"Having done this, she seemed to forget us and 
drifted away among the flowers, touching some gently 
as she passed, snipping a dead leaf here and arranging 
a misplaced branch there. 

" We left almost immediately, but have been there 
many times since, and though as a whole the garden 
is too heavily fragrant, I thought that it might suggest 
possibilities to you." 

As Aunt Lavinia paused we were turning from the 
main road into the narrow but beautifully kept lane 
upon which the Herb Farm, as it was still called, 
was located, by one of those strange freaks that some- 
times induces people to build in a strangely inaccessible 
spot, though quite near civilization. I know that you 
must have come upon many such places in your wan- 
derings. 

Of course my curiosity was piqued, and I felt, be- 
sides, as if I was about to step into the page of some 



296 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

strange psychological romance, nor was I disap- 
pointed. 

The first thing that I saw when we entered was a 
great strip of heliotrope that rivalled my own, and 
opposite it an equal mass of silvery lavender crowned 
by its own flowers, of the colour that we so fre- 
quently use as a term, but seldom correctly. There 
were no flagged or gravel walks, but closely shorn 
grass paths, the width of a lawn-mower, that followed 
the outline of the borders and made grateful footing. 

Bounding the heliotrope and lavender on one side 
was a large bed of what I at first thought were Mar- 
garet carnations, of every colour combination known 
to the flower, but a closer view showed that while those 
in the centre were Margarets, those of the wide border 
were of a heavier quality both in build of plant, texture 
of leaf, and flower, which was like a compact green- 
house carnation, the edges of the petals being very 
smooth and round, while in addition to many rich, 
solid colours there were flowers of white-and-yellow 
ground, edged and striped and flaked with colour, 
and the fragrance delicious and reminiscent of the 
clove pinks of May. 

Mrs. Puffin, the companion, could tell us little about 
them except that the seed from which they were 




A Bed of Japan Pinks. 



FRAGRANT FLOWERS AND LEAVES 297 

raised came from England and that, as she put it, they 
were fussy, troublesome things, as those sown one 
season had to be lifted and wintered in the cold pit 
and get just so much air every day, and be planted 
out in the border again in April. Aunt Lavinia rec- 
ognized them as the same border carnations over 
which she had raved when she first saw them in 
the trim gardens of Hampton Court. Can either you 
or Evan tell me more of them and why we do not 
see them here? Before long I shall go garden mad, 
I fear; for after grooming the place into a generally 
decorative and floriferous condition of trees, shrubs, 
vines, ferns, etc., will come the hunger for specialties 
that if completely satisfied will necessitate not only 
a rosary, a lily and wild garden, a garden — rather 
than simply a bed — of sweet odours, and lastly a 
garden wholly for the family of pinks or carnations, 
whichever is the senior title. I never thought of 
these last except as a garden incident until I saw their 
possibilities in Mrs. Marchant's space of fragrant 
leaves and flowers. 

The surrounding fences were entirely concealed by 
lilacs and syringas, interspersed with gigantic bushes 
of the fragrant, brown- flowered strawberry shrub ; the 
four gates, two toward the road, one to the barn-yard, 



298 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

and one entering the wood lane, were arched 
high and covered by vines of Wisteria, while similar 
arches seemed to bring certain beds together that 
would have looked scattered and meaningless with- 
out them. In fact next to the presence of fragrant 
things, the artistic use of vines as draperies appealed 
to me most. 

The border following the fence was divided, back 
of the house, by a vine-covered arbour, on the one 
side of which the medicinal herbs and simples were 
massed ; on the other what might be classed as decora- 
tive or garden flowers, though some of the simples, 
such as tansy with its clusters of golden buttons, must 
be counted decorative. 

The plants were never set in straight lines, but in 
irregular groups that blended comfortably together. 
Mrs. Marchant was not feeling well, Mrs. Puffin 
said, and could not come out, greatly to my disap- 
pointment ; but the latter was only too glad to do 
the honours, and the plant names slipped from her 
tongue with the ease of long familiarity. 

This patch of low growth with small heads of purple 
flowers was broad- leaved English thyme; that next, 
summer savory, used in cooking, she said. Then 
followed common sage and its scarlet-flowered cousin 



FRAGRANT FLOWERS AND LEAVES 299 

that we know as salvia; next came rue and rosemary, 
Ophelia's flower of remembrance, with stiff leaves. 
Little known or grown, or rather capricious and ten- 
der here, I take it, for I find plants of it offered for 
sale in only one catalogue. Marigolds were here also, 
why I do not know, as I should think they belonged 
with the more showy flowers; then inconspicuous 
pennyroyal and several kinds of mints — spearmint, 
peppermint, and some great plants of velvet-leaved 
catnip. 

Borage I saw for the first time, also coriander 
of the aromatic seeds, and a companion of dill of vine- 
gar fame; and strangely enough, in rotation of Bible 
quotation, cumin and rue came next. 

Caraway and a feathery mass of fennel took me 
back to grandmother's Virginia garden; balm and 
arnica, especially when I bruised a leaf of the latter 
between my fingers, recalled the bottle from which I 
soothe the Infant's childish bumps, the odour of it 
being also strongly reminiscent of my own childhood. 

Angelica spoke of the sweet candied stalks, but when 
we reached a spot of basil, Martin Cortright's tongue 
was loosed and he began to recite from Keats ; and all 
at once I seemed to see Isabella sitting among the 
shadows holding between her knees the flower-pot from 



300 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

which the strangely nourished plant of basil grew as 
she watered it with her tears. 

A hedge of tall sunflowers, from whose seeds, Mrs. 
Puffin said, a soothing and nourishing cough syrup 
may be made, antedating cod-liver oil, replaced the 
lilacs on this side, and with them blended boneset and 
horehound; while in a springy spot back toward the 
barn-yard the long leaves of sweet flag or calamus 
introduced a different class of foliage. 

On the garden side the border was broken every 
ten feet or so with great shrubs of our lemon verbena, 
called lemon balm by Mrs. Puffin. It seemed impos- 
sible that such large, heavily wooded plants could be 
lifted for winter protection in the cellar, yet such Mrs. 
Puffin assured us was the case. So I shall grow mine 
to this size if possible, for what one can do may be 
accomplished by another, — that is the tonic of seeing 
other gardens than one's own. Between the lemon 
verbenas were fragrant- leaved geraniums of many 
flavours — rose, nutmeg, lemon, and one with a sharp 
peppermint odour, also a skeleton-leaved variety; 
while a low-growing plant with oval leaves and half- 
trailing habit and odd odour, Mrs. Puffin called apple 
geranium, though it does not seem to favour the 
family. Do you know it? 



FRAGRANT FLOWERS AND LEAVES 301 

Bee balm in a blaze of scarlet made glowing colour 
amid so much green, and strangely enough the bluish 
lavender of the taller-growing sister, wild bergamot, 
seems to harmonize with it; while farther down the 
line grew another member of this brave family of horse- 
mints with almost pink, irregular flowers of great 
beauty. 

Southernwood formed fernlike masses here and 
there; dwarf tansy made the edging, together with 
the low, yellow-flowered musk, which Aunt Lavinia, 
now quite up in such things, declared to be a "musk- 
scented mimulus!" whatever that may be! Stocks, 
sweet sultan, and tall wands of evening primrose 
graded this border up to another shrubbery. 

Of mignonette the garden boasts a half dozen 
species, running from one not more than six inches 
in height with cinnamon- red flowers to a tall variety 
with pointed flower spikes, something of the shape 
of the white flowers of the clethra bush or wands 
of Culver's root that grow along the fence at Opal 
Farm. It is not so fragrant as the common migno- 
nette, but would be most graceful to arrange with 
roses or sweet peas. Aunt Lavinia says that she 
thinks that it is sold under the name of Miles spiral 
mignonette. 



302 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

Close to the road, where the fence angle allows for 
a deep bed and the lilacs grade from the tall white 
of the height of trees down to the compact bushes 
of newer French varieties, lies the violet bed, now a 
mass of green leaves only, but by these Aunt Lavinia's 
eye read them out and found here the English 
sweet wild violet, as well as the deep purple double 
garden variety, the tiny white scented that comes 
with pussy-willows, the great single pansy violet of 
California, and the violets grown from the Russian 
steppes that carpeted the ground under your "mother 
tree." 

From this bed the lilies-of-the-valley start and 
follow the entire length of the front fence, as you 
preach on the sunny side, the fence itself being hidden 
by a drapery of straw-coloured and pink Chinese honey- 
suckle that we called at home June honeysuckle, though 
this is covered with flower sprays in late August, and 
must be therefore a sort of monthly- minded hybrid, 
after the fashion of the hybrid tea-rose. 

If I were to tell of the tea-roses grown here, they 
would fill a chronicle by itself, though only a few of 
the older kinds, such as safrano, bon silene, and perle, 
are favourites. Mrs. Puffin says that some of them, 
the great shrubs, are wintered out-of-doors, and others 



FRAGRANT FLOWERS AND LEAVES 303 

are lifted, like the lemon balms, and kept in the dry, 
light cellar in tubs. 

But oh ! Mrs. Evan, you must go and see Mrs. 
Marchant's lilies ! They are growing as freely as 
weeds among the uncut grass, and blooming as pro- 
fusely as the bell-lilies in Opal Farm meadows ! And 
all the spring bulbs are also grown in this grass that lies 
between the shorn grass paths, and in autumn when 
the tops are dead and gone it is carefully burned 
over and the turf is all the winter covering they have. 

Does the grass look ragged and unsightly? No, 
because I think that it is cut lightly with a scythe after 
the spring bulbs are gone and that the patient woman, 
whose life the garden is, keeps the tallest seeded grasses 
hand trimmed from between the lily stalks ! 

Ah, but how that garden lingers with me, and the 
single glimpse I caught of the deep dark eyes of its 
mistress as they looked out of a vine- clad window 
toward the sky ! 

I have made a list of the plants that are possible 
for my own permanent bed of fragrant flowers and 
leaves, that I may enjoy them, and that the Infant 
may have fragrant memories to surround all her 
youth and bind her still more closely to the things 
of outdoor life. 



3 04 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

I chanced upon a verse of Bourdillon's the other 
day. Do you know it ? 

" Ah ! full of purest influence 

On human mind and mood, 
Of holiest joy to human sense 

Are river, field, and wood; 
And better must all childhood be 
That knows a garden and a tree! " 



XV 

THE PINK FAMILY OUTDOORS 

(Barbara Campbell to Mary Penrose) 

Oaklands, September i. So you have been away 
and in going discovered the possibilities of growing 
certain pinks and carnations out-of-doors that, in 
America at least, are usually considered the winter 
specialties of a cool greenhouse ! 

We too have been afield somewhat, having but 
now returned from a driving trip of ten days, nicely 
timed as to gardens and resting-places until the last 
night, when, making a false turn, ten o'clock found 
us we did not know where and with no prospect of 
getting our bearings. 

We had ample provisions for supper with us, includ- 
ing two bottles of ginger ale ; no one knew that we were 
lost but ourselves and no one was expecting us any- 
where, as we travel quite con amove on these little 
near-by journeys of ours. The August moon was big 
and hot and late in rising ; there was a rick of old hay 
in a clean- looking field by the roadside that had 
x 3°5 



306 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

evidently been used as winter fodder for young cattle, 
for what remained of it was nibbled about the base, 
leaving a protruding, umbrella-like thatch, not very 
substantial, but sufficient shelter for a still night. Then 
and there we decided to play gypsy and camp out, 
literally under the sky. Evan unharnessed the 
horse, watered him at a convenient roadside puddle, 
and tethered him at the rear of the stack, where he 
could nibble the hay, but not us ! Then spreading 
the horse- blanket on some loose hay for a bed, with 
the well-tufted seat of the buggy for a pillow, and 
utilizing the lap robe for a cover against dew, we 
fell heavily asleep, though I had all the time a half- 
conscious feeling as if little creatures were scrambling 
about in the hay beneath the blanket and occasionally 
brushing my face or ears with a batlike wing, tiny 
paws, or whisking tail. When I awoke, and of course 
immediately stirred up Evan, the moon was low on 
the opposite side of the stack, the stars were hidden, 
and there was a dull red glow among the heavy clouds 
of the eastern horizon like the reflection of a distant 
fire, while an owl hooted close by from a tree and then 
flew with a lurch across the meadow, evidently to the 
destruction of some small creature, for a squeal accom- 
panied the swoop. A mysterious thing, this flight 



THE PINK FAMILY OUTDOORS 307 

of the owl : the wings did not flap, there was no sound, 
merely the consciousness of displaced air. 

We were not, as it afterward proved, ten miles from 
home, and yet, as far as trace of humanity was con- 
cerned, we might have been the only created man and 
woman. 

Do you remember the old gypsy song ? — Ben Jon- 
son's, I think — 

" The owl is abroad, the bat, the toad, 
And so is the cat-a-mountain ; 
The ant and the mole both sit in a hole, 
And frog peeps out o' the fountain; 

The dogs they bay and the timbrels play 
And the spindle now is turning; 
The moon it is red, and the stars are fled 
But all the sky is a-burning." 

But we were still more remote, for of beaters of tim- 
brels and turners of spindles were there none ! 

Your last chronicle interested us all. In the first 
place father remembers Mrs. Marchant perfectly, 
for he and the doctor used to exchange visits con- 
stantly during that long-ago summer when they lived 
on the old Herb Farm at Coningsby. Father had 
heard that she was hopelessly deranged, but nothing 



308 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

further, and the fact that she is living within driving 
distance in the midst of her garden of fragrance is 
a striking illustration both of the littleness of the earth 
and the social remoteness of its inhabitants. 

Father says that Mrs. Marchant was always a very 
intellectual woman, and he remembers that in the old 
days she had almost a passion for fragrant flowers, 
and once wrote an essay upon the psychology of 
perfumes that attracted some attention in the medi- 
cal journal in which it was published by her husband. 
That the perfume of flowers should now have drawn 
the shattered fragments of her mind together for their 
comfort and given her the foretaste of immortality, 
by the sign of the consciousness of personal presence 
and peace, is beautiful indeed. 

Your declaration that henceforth one garden is not 
enough for your ambition, but that you crave several, 
amuses me greatly. For a mere novice I must say 
that you are making strides in seven-league horticul- 
tural boots, wherein you have arrived at the heart of 
the matter, viz. : — one may grow many beautiful 
and satisfactory flowers in a mixed garden such as 
falls to the lot of the average woman sufficiently lucky 
to own a garden at all, but to develop the best possi- 
bilities of any one family, like the rose, carnation, 



THE PINK FAMILY OUTDOORS 309 

or lily, that is a bit whimsical about food and 
lodging, each one must have a garden of its own, so 
to speak, which, for the amateur, may be made to read 
as a special bed in a special location, and not neces- 
sarily a vast area. 

This need is always recognized in the English gar- 
den books, and the chapter headings, The Rose Garden, 

— Hardy Garden, — Wall Garden, — Lily Garden, 

— Alpine Garden, etc., lead one at first sight to think 
that it is a great estate alone that can be so treated ; 
but it is merely a horticultural protest, born of long 
experience, against mixing races to their mutual hurt, 
and this precaution, together with the climate, makes 
of all England a gardener's paradise ! 

What you say of the expansiveness of the list of 
fragrant flowers and leaves is also true, for taken in 
the literal sense there are really few plants without an 
individual odour of some sort in bark, leaf, or flower 
usually sufficient to identify them. In a recent 
book giving what purports to be a list of fra- 
grant flowers and leaves, the chrysanthemum is in- 
cluded, as it gives out an aromatic perfume from its 
leaves ! This is true, but so also does the garden mari- 
gold, and yet we should not include either among 
fragrant leaves in the real sense. 



310 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

Hence to make the right selection of plants for the 
bed of sweet odours it is best, as in the case of choosing 
annuals, to adhere to a few tried and true worthies. 

But at your rhapsody on the bed of carnations, I 
am also tempted to launch forth in praise of all pinks 
in general and the annual flowering garden carnation, 
early Marguerite, and picotee varieties in particular, 
especially when I think what results might be had 
from the same bits of ground that are often left to be 
overrun with straggling and unworthy annuals. For 
to have pinks to cut for the house, pinks for colour 
masses out-of-doors, and pinks to give away, is but a 
matter of understanding, a little patience, and the 
possession of a cold pit (which is but a deeper sort of 
frame like that used for a hotbed and sunken in the 
ground) against a sunny wall, for the safe wintering 
of a few of the tenderer species. 

In touching upon this numerous family, second 
only to the rose in importance, the embarrassment is, 
where to begin. Is a carnation a pink, or a pink a 
carnation? I have often been asked. You may 
settle that as you please, since the family name of all, 
even the bearded Sweet- William, is Dianthus, the 
decisive title of Linnaeus, a word from the Greek mean- 
ing "flower of Jove," while the highly scented species 



THE PINK FAMILY OUTDOORS 311 

and varieties of the more or less pungent clove breath 
remain under the old subtitle — Caryophyllus. 

To go minutely into the differences and distinctions 
of the race would require a book all to itself, for in 
1597, more than three hundred years ago, Gerarde 
wrote: "There are, under the name of Caryophyllus, 
comprehended diuers and sundrie sorts of plants, of 
such variable colours and also severall shapes that a 
great and large volume would not suffice to write of 
euery one in particular." And when we realize that 
the pink was probably the first flower upon which, 
early in the eighteenth century, experiments in hybridi- 
zation were tried, the intricacy will be fully understood. 

For the Garden, You, and I, three superficial 
groups only are necessary : the truly hardy perennial 
pinks, that when once established remain for years; 
the half-hardy perennials that flower the second year 
after planting, and require protection; and the bien- 
nials that will flower the first year and may be treated 
as annuals. 

The Margaret carnations, though biennials, are best 
treated as annuals, for they may be had in flower 
in three to four months after the sowing of the seed, 
and the English perennial border carnations, bizarres, 
and picotees will live for several years, but in this 



3 i2 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

climate must be wintered in a dry wooden cold pit, 
after the manner of the perennial varieties of wall- 
flowers, tender roses, and the .like. 

I emphasize the words dry wooden in connection 
with a cold pit from my experience in seeking to make 
mine permanent by replacing the planks, with which 
it was built and which often decayed, by stone work, 
with most disastrous results, causing me to lose a fine 
lot of plants by mildew. 

The truly hardy pinks (dianthus plumarius), the 
fringed and clove-scented species both double and 
single of old-time gardens, that bloom in late spring 
and early summer, are called variously May and grass 
pinks. Her Majesty is a fine double white variety 
of this class, and if, in the case of double varieties, 
you wish to avoid the risk of getting single flowers, you 
would better start your stock with a few plants and 
subdivide. For myself, every three or four years, I 
sow the seed of these pinks in spring in the hardy seed 
bed, and transplant to their permanent bed early 
in September, covering the plants lightly in winter 
with evergreen boughs or corn stalks. Leaf litter or 
any sort of covering that packs and holds water is 
deadly to pinks, so prone is the crown to decay. 

In the catalogues you will find these listed under the 



THE PINK FAMILY OUTDOORS 313 

names of Pheasant's Eye, Double Scotch pinks 
(Scotius), and Perpetual Pink (semper florens). With 
this class belongs the Sweet- William (dianthus bar- 
batus), which should be sown and treated in a like 
manner. It is also a hardy perennial, but I find it 
best to renew it every few years, as the flowers of young 
plants are larger, and in spite of care, the most beau- 
tiful hybrids will often decay at the ground. There is 
no garden flower, excepting the Dahlia, that gives us 
such a wealth of velvet bloom, and if you mean to 
make a specialty of pinks, I should advise you to buy 
a collection of Sweet- Williams in the separate colours, 
which range from white to deepest crimson with 
varied markings. 

Directions for sowing the biennial Chinese and 
Japanese pinks were given in the chronicle concern- 
ing the hardy seed bed. These pinks are not really 
fragrant, though most of them have a pleasant apple 
odour that, together with their wonderful range of 
colour, makes them particularly suitable for table 
decoration. 

In addition to the mixed colours recommended for 
the general seed bed, the following Japanese varieties 
are of special beauty, among the single pinks : Queen 
of Holland, pure white; Eastern Queen, enormous 



314 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

rose- pink flowers; Crimson Belle, dark red. Among 
the double, Fireball, an intense scarlet; the Diadem 
pink, Salmon Queen, and the lovely Oriental Beauty 
with diversely marked petals of a crepy texture. 

The double varieties of course are more solid and 
lasting, if they do not insist upon swelling so mightily 
that they burst the calyx and so have a dishevelled 
and one-sided look; but for intrinsic beauty of colour 
and marking the single Chinese and Japanese pinks, 
particularly the latter, reign supreme. They have a 
quality of holding one akin to that of the human eye 
and possess much of the power of individual expression 
that belongs to pansies and single violets. 

By careful management and close clipping of with- 
ered flowers, a bed of these pinks may be had in bloom 
from June until December, the first flowers coming 
from the autumn-sown plants, which may be replaced 
in August by those sown in the seed bed in late May, 
which by this time will be well budded. 

"August is a kittle time for transplanting border 
things," I hear you say. To be sure; but with your 
water-barrel, the long-necked water-pots, and a judi- 
cious use of inverted flower- pots between ten a.m. 
and four p.m., there is no such word as fail in this as 
in many other cases. 




Single and Double Pinks. 



THE PINK FAMILY OUTDOORS 315 

Upon the second and third classes you must depend 
for pinks of the taller growth ranging from one to two 
feet in height and flourishing long-stemmed clusters 
of deliriously clove-scented flowers. The hardy Mar- 
garets might be wintered in the pit, if it were worth 
the while, but they are so easily raised from seed, and 
so prone literally to bloom themselves to death in the 
three months between midsummer and hard frost, 
that I prefer to sow them each year in late March and 
April and plant them out in May, as soon as their 
real leaves appear, and pull them up at the general 
autumnal garden clearance. Upon the highly scented 
perpetual and picotee pinks or carnations (make 
your own choice of terms) you must depend for fra- 
grance between the going of the May pinks and the 
coming of the Margarets ; not that they of necessity 
cease blooming when their more easily perfected sis- 
ters begin ; quite the contrary, for the necessity of lift- 
ing them in the winter gives them a spring set-back 
that they do not have in England, where they are the 
universal hardy pink, alike of the gardens of great 
estates and the brick-edged cottage border. 

These are the carnations of Mrs. Marchant's garden 
that filled you with such admiration, and also awoke 
the spirit of emulation. Lavinia Cortright was correct 



316 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

in associating them with the lavish bloom of the gar- 
dens of Hampton Court, for if anything could make 
me permanently unpatriotic (which is impossible), 
it would be the roses and picotee pinks of the dear old 
stupid (human middle-class, and cold bedroom- wise), 
but florally adorable mother country ! 

The method by which you may possess yourself of 
these crowning flowers of the garden, for coronations 
is one of the words from which carnation is supposed 
but to be derived, is as follows : — 

Be sure of your seed. Not long ago it was neces- 
sary to import it direct, but not now. You may buy 
from the oldest of American seed houses fifty varieties 
of carnations and picotees, in separate packets, for three 
dollars, or twenty-five sorts for one dollar and seventy- 
five cents, or twelve (enough for a novice) for one 
dollar, the same being undoubtedly English or Hol- 
land grown, while a good English house asks five 
shillings, or a dollar and a quarter, for a single packet 
of mixed varieties ! 

Moral — it is not necessary that "made in England" 
should be stamped upon flower seeds to prove them of 
English origin ! 

If you can spare hotbed room, the seeds may be 
sown in April, like the early Margarets, and trans- 



THE PINK FAMILY OUTDOORS 317 

planted into some inconspicuous part of the vegetable 
garden, where the soil is deep and firm and there is a 
free circulation of air (not between tall peas and sweet 
corn), as for the first summer these pinks have no 
ornamental value, other than the pleasurable spec- 
tacle made by a healthy plant of any kind, by virtue 
of its future promise. Before frost or not later than 
the second week in October the pinks should be put 
in long, narrow boxes or pots sufficiently large to hold 
all the roots comfortably, but with little space to spare, 
watered, and partly shaded, until they have recovered 
themselves, when they should be set in the lightest 
part of the cold pit. During the winter months they 
should have only enough water to keep the earth from 
going to dust, and as much light and air as possible 
without absolutely freezing hard, after the manner of 
treating lemon verbenas, geraniums, and wall-flowers. 

By the middle of April they may be planted in the 
bed where they are to bloom, and all the further care 
they need will be judicious watering and the care- 
ful staking of the flower stalks if they are weak and the 
buds top-heavy, — and by the way, as to the staking 
of flowers in general, a word with you later on. 

In the greenhouse, pinks are liable to many ail- 
ments, and several of these follow them out-of-doors, 



3 i8 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

three having given me some trouble, the most, fatal 
being of a fungoid order, due usually to unhealthy 
root conditions or an excess of moisture. 

Rust is one of these, its Latin name being too long 
for the simple vocabulary of The Garden, You, and I. 
It first shows itself in a brown spot that seems to have 
worked out from the inner part of the leaf. Some- 
times it can be conquered by snipping the infected 
leaves, but if it seizes an entire bed, the necessary 
evil of spraying with Bordeaux mixture must be resorted 
to, as in the case of fungus -spotted hollyhocks. 

Thrip, the little transparent, whitish fly, will some- 
times bother border carnations in the same way as it 
does roses. If the flowers are only in bud, I sprinkle 
them with my brass rose- atomizer and powder slightly 
with helebore. But if the flowers are open, sprinkling 
and shaking alone may be resorted to. For the sev- 
eral kinds of underground worms that trouble pinks, 
of which the wireworm is the chief, I have found a lib- 
eral use of unslaked lime and bone-dust in the prepa- 
ration of the soil before planting the best preventive. 

Other ailments have appeared only occasionally. 
Sometimes an apparently healthy, full-grown plant 
will suddenly wither away, or else swell up close to 
the ground and finally burst so that the sap leaks 



THE PINK FAMILY OUTDOORS 319 

out and it dies like a punctured or girdled tree. The 
first trouble may come from the too close contact of 
fresh manure, which should be kept away from the 
main roots of carnations, as from contact with lily 
bulbs. 

As to the swelling called gout, there is no cure, so 
do not temporize. Pull up the plant at once and 
disinfect the spot with unslaked lime and sulphur. 

Thus, Mary Penrose, may you have either pinks in 
your garden or a garden of pinks, whichever way you 
may care to develop your idea. "A deal of trouble?" 
Y-e-s; but then only think of the flowers that crown 
the work, and you might spend an equal amount of 
time in pricking cloth with a steel splinter and em- 
broidering something, in the often taken-in-vain name 
of decorative art, that in the end is only an elaborated 
rag — without even the bone and the hank of hair ! 



XVI 
THE FRAME OF THE PICTURE 

VINES AND SHRUBS 

(Mary Penrose to Barbara Campbell) 

Woodridge, September 10. Your chronicle of the 
Pink Family found me by myself in camp, dreaming 
away as vigorously as if it was a necessary and prac- 
tical occupation. After all, are we sure that it is not, 
in a way, both of these? This season my dreams of 
night have been so long that they have lingered into 
the things of day and vice versa, and yet neither the 
one nor the other have whispered of idleness, but the 
endless hope of work. 

Bart's third instalment of vacation ends to-morrow, 
though we shall continue to sleep out of doors so long 
as good weather lasts; the remaining ten days we are 
saving until October, when the final transplanting of 
trees and shrubs is to be made; and in addition to 
those for the knoll we have marked some shapely dog- 
woods, hornbeams, and tulip trees for grouping in 

320 



THE FRAME OF THE PICTURE 321 

other parts of the home acres. There are also to be 
had for the digging good bushes of the early pink 
and clammy white azalea, mountain- laurel, several of 
the blueberry tribe, that have white flowers in summer 
and glorious crimson foliage in autumn, white- flowered 
elder, button- bush, groundsel tree, witchhazel, bay- 
berry, the shining- leaved sumach, the white meadow- 
sweet, and pink steeplebush, besides a number of cor- 
nels and viburnums suitable for shrubberies. As I 
glance over the list of what the river and quarry woods 
have yielded us, it is like reading from the catalogue 
of a general dealer in hardy plants, and yet I suppose 
hundreds of people have as much almost at their doors, 
if they did but know it. 

The commercial side of a matter of this kind is not 
the one upon which to dwell the most, except upon 
the principle of the old black woman who said, " Chil- 
lun, count yer marcies arter every spell o' pain!" and 
to-day, in assaying our mercies and the various ad- 
vantages of our garden vacation, I computed that 
the trees, shrubs, ferns, herbaceous wild flowers, and 
vines (yes, we have included vines, of which I must 
tell you), if bought of the most reasonable of dealers, 
would have cost us at least three hundred dollars, 
without express or freight charges. 



322 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

The reason for my being by myself at this particu- 
lar moment is that Bart, mounted on solemn Romeo, 
has taken the Infant, astride her diminutive pony, by 
a long leader, for a long- promised ride up the river 
road, the same being the finale of the celebration of 
his birthday, that began shortly after daylight. The 
Infant, in order to be early enough to give him the 
first of his thirty-three kisses, came the night before, 
and though she has camped out with us at intervals 
all summer, the novelty has not worn off. She has a 
happy family of pets that, without being caged or in 
any way coerced or confined, linger about the old 
barn, seem to watch for her coming, and expect their 
daily rations, even though they do not care to be 
handled. 

Punch and Judy, the gray squirrels of the dove- 
cote, perch upon her shoulders and pry into the pockets 
of her overalls for nuts or kernels of corn, all the while 
keeping a bright eye upon Reddy, the setter pup, 
who, though he lies ever so sedately, nose between 
paws, they well know is not to be trusted. While as 
for birds, all the season we have had chipping- spar- 
rows, catbirds, robins, and even a wood-thrush, leader 
of the twilight orchestra, all of whom the little witch 
has tempted in turn by a bark saucer spread with 



THE FRAME OB THE PICTURE 323 

leaves and various grains and small fruits, from straw- 
berries to mulberries, for which she has had a daily 
hunt through the Opal Farm land the sea-/.:. 
through. 

Toward the English sparrow she positively declines 
to harden her heart, in spite A my having repea I 
the story of its encroachments and crimes. She 
listens and merely shakes her head, saying We 
'vited them to come, didn : we, mother? When 
'vite- people : ; always feed '"em; 'sides, they're the 
only ones '11 let me put them in my pocket," which is 
perfectly true for having learned this warm abiding- 
place of much oats and cracked com, the; folk her 
in a Sock, and a few confiding spirits allow themset s 
to be handled- 

A: the birthday dinner party, arranged by the In- 
fant, a number of these guests were present We 
must have looked a motley crew hi 1 hose company 
3M King Cole himself would have been embarrasse . 
for Bart wore a wreath pf pink 3 e ink i gjgan- 
fck sunfk ,-r made my head-dress, and the rake 
made and garnished with red ind white peppermint 
an American and an Irish flag, by Anastasaa, 
mr^nted irmly . - . .-- . Jlanec nass ..' Be as 
ith a, superstructure of -mall .. . :omatoes ; parsley, 



324 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

young carrots, and beets, the colour of these vegetables 
having caught the Infant's eye. 

The pony, Ginger, had a basket of second-crop clover 
flowers provided for him; Reddy some corned-beef 
hash, his favourite dish, coaxed from Anastasia; while 
for Punch, Judy, and as many of their children as 
would venture down from the rafters, the Infant had 
compounded a wonderful salad of mixed nuts and 
corn. As the Infant ordained that "the childrens 
shan't turn in 'til d'sert,"we had the substantial part 
of our meal in peace; but the candles were no sooner 
blown out and the cake cut than Ginger left his clover 
to nibble the young carrots, the squirrels got into the 
nut dish bodily and began sorting over the nuts to 
find those they liked best, with such vigour that the 
others flew in our faces, and Reddy fell off the box 
upon which the Infant had balanced him with diffi- 
culty, nearly carrying the table-cloth with him, while 
at this moment, the feast becoming decidedly crumby, 
we were surrounded by the entire flock of English 

sparrows ! 
******* 

Now this is not at all what I started to tell you; 
quite the contrary. Please forgive this domestic ex- 
cursion into the land of maternal pride and happen- 



THE FRAME OF THE PICTURE 325 

ings. What I meant to write of was my conviction, 
that came through sitting on the hay rafters and look- 
ing down upon the garden, that as a beautiful paint- 
ing is improved by proper framing, so should the 
garden be enclosed at different points by frames, to 
focus the eye upon some central object. 

Though the greater part of the garden is as yet 
only planned and merely enough set out in each part 
to fix special boundaries, as in the case of the rose bed, 
I realize that as a whole it is too open and lacks per- 
spective. You see it all at once; there are no breaks. 
No matter in what corner scarlet salvia and vermilion 
nasturtiums may be planted, they are sure to get in 
range with the pink verbenas and magenta phlox in 
a teeth-on-edge way. 

From other viewpoints the result is no better. 
Looking from the piazza that skirts two sides of the 
house, where we usually spend much time, three por- 
tions of the garden are in sight at once, and all on dif- 
ferent planes, without proper separating frames; the 
rose garden is near at hand, the old borders leading 
to the sundial being at right angles with it. At the 
right, the lower end of the knoll and the gap with 
its bed of heliotrope are prominent, while between, at 
a third distance, is the proposed location of the white- 



326 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

birch screen, the old wall rockery, etc. The rockery 
and rose garden are in their proper relation, but the 
other portions should be given perspective by framing, 
and the result of my day-dreams is that this, accord- 
ing to nature, should be done by the grouping of 
shrubs and the drapery of vines. 

I now for the first time fully understand the uses of 
the pergola in landscape gardening, the open sides 
of which form a series of vine- draped frames. I had 
always before thought it a stiff and artificial sort of 
arrangement, as well as the tall clipped yews, laurel 
trees in tubs, and marble vases and columns that are 
parts of the usual framework of the more formal 
gardens. And while these things would be decidedly 
out of place in gardens of our class, and at best could 
only be indulged in via white- painted wooden imitations, 
the woman who is her own gardener may exercise 
endless skill in bringing about equally good results 
with the rustic material at hand and by following wild 
nature, who, after all, is the first model. 

I think I hear Evan laughing at my preachment 
concerning his special art, but the comprehension of 
it has all come through looking at the natural landscape 
effects that have happened at Opal Farm owing to 
the fact that the hand of man has there been stayed 




'■The silver maple by the lane gate." 



THE FRAME OF THE PICTURE 327 

these many years. On either side of the rough bars 
leading between our boundary wall and the meadow 
stands a dead cedar tree, from which the dry, moss- 
covered branches have been broken by the loads of 
hay that used to be gathered up at random and carted 
out this way. Wild birds doubtless used these branches 
as perches of vantage from which they might view the 
country, both during feeding excursions and in migra- 
tion, and thus have sown the seed of their provender, 
for lo and behold, around the old trees have grown 
vines of wild grapes, with flowers that perfume the en- 
tire meadow in June. Here the woody, spiral- climbing 
waxwork holds aloft its clusters of berries that look 
like bunches of miniature lemons until on being ripe 
they open and show the coral fruit; Virginia creeper 
of the five-pointed fingers, clinging tendrils, glorious 
autumn colour, and spreading clusters of purple black- 
berries, and wild white clematis, the "traveller's joy" of 
moist roadside copses, all blending together and stretch- 
ing out hands, until this season being undisturbed, they 
have clasped to form a natural arch of surpassing 
beauty. 

Having a great pile of cedar poles, in excess of the 
needs of all our other projects, my present problem 
is to place a series of simple arches constructed on 



328 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

this natural idea, that shall frame the different garden 
vistas from the best vantage-point. Rustic pillars, after 
the plan of Evan's that you sent me for the corners of 
the rose garden, will give the necessary formal touch, 
while groups of shrubs can be so placed as not only 
to screen colours that should not be seen in combina- 
tion, but to make reasons for turns that would 
otherwise seem arbitrary. 

Aunt Lavinia has promised me any number of 
Chinese honeysuckle vines from the little nursery 
bed of rooted cuttings that is Martin Cortright's 
special province, for she writes me that they began 
with this before having seed beds for either hardy 
plants or annuals, as they wished to have hedges of 
flowering shrubs in lieu of fences, and some fine old 
bushes on the place furnished ample cuttings of the 
old-fashioned varieties, which they have supplemented. 

Aunt Lavinia also says that the purple Wisteria 
grows easily from the beanlike seed and blossoms in 
three years, and that she has a dozen of these two- 
year-old seedlings that she will send me as soon as I 
have place for them. Remembering your habit of 
giving every old tree a vine to comfort its old age, 
and in particular the silver maple by the lane gate of 
your garden, with its woodpecker hole and swinging 




'A CURTAIN TO THE SIDE PORCH. 



THE FRAME OF THE PICTURE 329 

garniture of Wisteria bloom, I have promised a similar 
cloak to a gnarled bird cherry that stands midway in 
the fence rockery, and yet another to an attenuated 
poplar, so stripped of branches as to be little more 
than a pole and still keeping a certain dignity. 

The honeysuckles I shall keep for panelling the 
piazza, they are such clean vines and easily controlled ; 
while on the two- story portion under the guest-room 
windows some Virginia creepers can be added to make 
a curtain to the side porch. 

As for other vines, we have many resources. Fes- 
tooned across the front stoop at Opal Farm is an old 
and gigantic vine of the scarlet- and- orange trumpet 
creeper, that has overrun the shed, climbed the side 
of the house, and followed round the rough edges of 
the eaves, while all through the grass of the front yard 
are seedling plants of the vine that, in spring, are 
blended with tufts of the white star of Bethlehem 
and yellow daffies. 

In the river woods, brush and swamp lots, near by, 
we have found and marked for our own the mountain 
fringe with its feathery foliage and white flowers 
shaded with purple pink, that suggest both the bleed- 
ing heart of gardens and the woodland Dutchman's 
breeches. It grows in great strings fourteen or fifteen 



330 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

feet in length and seems as trainable as smilax or 
the asparagus vine. Here are also woody trailers of 
moonseed, with its minute white flowers in the axils 
of leaves that might pass at first glance for one of 
the many varieties of wild grapes; the hyacinth 
bean, with its deliciously fragrant chocolate flowers 
tinged with violet, that is so kind in covering the 
unsightly underbrush of damp places. And here, 
first, last, and always, come the wild grapes, showing 
so many types of leaf and fruit, from the early ripen- 
ing summer grape of the high- climbing habit, having 
the most typical leaf and thin-skinned, purple berries, 
that have fathered so many cultivated varieties; the 
frost grape, with its coarsely- toothed, rather heart- 
shaped, pointed leaf and small black berries, that are 
uneatable until after frost (and rather horrid even 
then); to the riverside grape of the glossy leaf, 
fragrant blossoms and fruit. 

One thing must be remembered concerning wild 
grapes: they should be planted, if in the open sun- 
light, where they will be conspicuous up to late summer 
only, as soon after this time the leaves begin to grow 
rusty, while those in moist and partly-shady places 
hold their own. I think this contrast was borne in 
upon me by watching a mass of grape-vines upon a 



THE FRAME OF THE PICTURE 331 

tumble-down wall that we pass on our way to the river 
woods. In August the leaves began to brown and curl 
at the edges, while similar vines in the cool lane shade 
were still green and growing. So you see, Mrs. Evan, 
that, in addition to our other treasure-trove, we are pre- 
pared to start a free vinery as well, and as our lucky 
star seems to be both of morning and evening and 
hangs a long while in the sky, Meyer, Larry's succes- 
sor, we find, has enough of a labourer's skill at post 
setting and a carpenter's eye and hand at making an 
angled arch (this isn't the right term, but you know 
what I mean), so that we have not had to pause in our 
improvements owing to Amos Opie's rheumatic 
illness. 

Not that I think the old man very ill, and I believe 
he could get about more if he wished, for when I went 
down to see him this morning, he seemed to have 
something on his mind, and with but little urging he 
told me his dilemma. Both The Man from Every- 
where and Maria Maxwell have made him good offers 
for his farm, The Man's being the first ! Now he had 
fully determined to sell to The Man, when Maria's 
kindness during his illness not only turned him in her 
favour, but gave him an attachment for the place, 
so that now he doesn't really wish to sell at all ! It 



332 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

is this mental perturbation, in his very slow nature, 
that is, I believe, keeping him an invalid ! 

What Maria wants of the farm neither Bart nor I 
can imagine. She has a little property, a few thousand 
dollars, enough probably to buy the farm and put it 
in livable repair, but this money we thought she was 
saving for the so-called rainy day (which is much more 
apt to be a very dry period) of spinsterhood ! Of course 
she has some definite plan, but whether it is bees or 
boarders, jam or a kindergarten, we do not know, 
but we may be very sure that she is not jumping at 
random. Only I'm a little afraid, much as I should 
like her for a next-door neighbour, that, with her 
practical head, she would insist upon making hay of 
the lily meadow ! 

"Straying away again from the horticultural to the 
domestic things," I hear you say. Yes; but now that 
the days are shortening a bit, it seems natural to think 
more about people again. If I only knew whether 
Maria means to give up her teaching this winter, I 
would ask her to stay with us and begin to train the 
Infant's mind in the way it should think, for my head 
and hands will be full and my heart overflowing, I 
imagine. Ah! this happy, blessed summer! Yes, 
I know that you know, though I have never told you. 



THE FRAME OF THE PICTURE 333 

That's what it means to have real friends. But to 
the shrubs. 

Will you do me one more favour before even the 
suspicion of frost touches my enthusiasm, that I may 
have everything in order in my Garden Boke against 
a planting season when Time may again hold his 
remorseless sway. This list of eighteen or more shrubs 
is made from those I know and like, with selections 
from that Aunt Lavinia sent me. Is it comprehen- 
sive, think you? Of course we cannot go into novel- 
ties in this direction, any more than we may with the 
roses. 

There is the little pale pink, Daphne Mezereum, 
that flowers before its leaves come in April. I saw 
it at Aunt Lavinia's and Mrs. Marchant had a great 
circle of the bushes. Then Forsythias, with yellow 
flowers, the red and pink varieties of Japanese quince, 
double-flowering almond and plum, the white spireas 
(they all have strange new names in the catalogue), 
the earliest being what mother used to call bridal- 
wreath (prunifolia), with its long wands covered with 
double flowers, like tiny white daisies, the St. Peter's 
wreath (Van Houttei) with the clustered flowers like 
small white wild roses, two pink species, Billardii 
and Anthony Waterer, beautiful if gathered before 



334 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

the flowers open, as the colour fades quickly, and a 
little dwarf bush, Fortune's white spirea, that I have 
seen at the florist's. Next the old-fashioned purple 
lilac, that seems to hold its own against all newcomers 
for garden use, the white tree lilac, the fragrant white 
mock orange or syringa (Coronarius), the Japanese 
barberry of yellow flowers and coral berries, the 
three deutzias, two being the tall crenata and scabra 
and the third the charming low- growing gracilis, 
the old-fashioned snowball or Guelder rose (vibur- 
num opulus sterilis), the weigelias, rose- pink and white, 
the white summer-flowering hydrangea (paniculata 
grandiflora) , and the brown-flowered, sweet-scented 
strawberry shrub (calycanthus floridus). 

"Truly a small slice from the loaf the catalogues 
offer," you say. Yes; but you must remember that 
our wild nursery has a long chain to add to these. 

In looking over the list of shrubs, it seems to me 
that the majority of them, like the early wild flowers, 
are white, but then it is almost as impossible to have 
too many white flowers as too many green leaves. 

September 15. I was prevented from finishing 
this until to-day, when I have a new domestic event 
to relate. Maria, no longer a music mistress, has 
leased the Opal Farm, it seems, and will remain with 



THE FRAME OF THE PICTURE 335 

me this winter pending the repairing of the house, 
which Amos Opie himself is to superintend. I wish 
I could fathom the ins and outs of the matter, which 
are not at present clear, but probably I shall know 
in time. Meanwhile, I have Maria for a winter com- 
panion, and a mystery to solve and puzzle about; is 
not this truly feminine bliss? 



XVII 
THE INS AND OUTS OF THE MATTER 

Chronicled by the rays of light and sound waves 
upon the walls of the house at Opal Farm. 

People Involved 

The Man from Everywhere, keeping bachelor's hall in the 
eastern half of the farm home. 

Amos Opie, living in the western half of the house, the sepa- 
rating door being locked on his side. 

Maria Maxwell, who, upon hearing Opie is again ill, has 
dropped in to give him hot soup and medicine. 

Amos Opie was more than usually uncomfortable 
this particular September evening. It may have been 
either a rather sudden change in the weather or the 
fact that now that he was sufficiently well to get about 
the kitchen and sit in the well- house porch, of a sunny 
morning, Maria Maxwell had given up the habit of 
running over several times a day to give him his medi- 
cine and be sure that the kettle boiled and his tea was 
freshly drawn, instead of being what she called "stewed 
bitterness" that had stood on the leaves all day. 

336 



INS AND OUTS OF THE MATTER 337 

Whichever it was, he felt wretched in body and 
mind, and began to think himself neglected and was 
consequently aggrieved. He hesitated a few minutes 
before he opened the door leading to The Man's part 
of the house, took a few steps into the square hall, and 
called "Mr. Blake" in a quavering voice; but no an- 
swer came, as the bachelor had not yet returned from 
the reservoir. 

Going back, he settled heavily into the rocking- 
chair and groaned, — it was not from real pain, simply 
he had relaxed his grip and was making himself mis- 
erable, — then he began to talk to himself. 

u She doesn't come in so often now he's come home, 
and he fights shy o' the place, thinkin' mebbe she's 
around, and they both wants to buy. He's offered 
me thirty-five hundred cash, and she's offered me 
thirty hundred cash, which is all the place's worth, 
for it'll take another ten hundred to straighten out 
the house, with new winder frames, floorin' 'nd plaster 
'nd shingles, beams and sills all bein' sound, — when 
the truth is I don't wish ter sell nohow, yet can't afford 
to hold ! I don't see light noway 'nd I'm feehV 
another turn comin' when I was nigh ready ter git 
about agin to Miss'ss Penrose flower poles. O 
lordy ! lordy ! I wish I had some more o' that settling 



338 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

medicine Maria Maxwell brought me " (people 
very seldom spoke of that young woman except by her 
complete name). "If I had my wind, I'd yell over 
to her to come up! Yes, I vow I would!" 

David, the hound, who had been lying asleep 
before the stove, in which the fire had died away, got 
up, stretched himself, and, going to his master, after 
gazing in his face for several minutes, licked his hands 
thoroughly and solemnly, in a way totally different 
from the careless and irresponsible licks of a joyous 
dog; then raising his head gave a long-drawn bay that 
finally broke from its melancholy music and degener- 
ated into a howl. 

Amos must have dozed in his chair, for it seemed 
only a moment when a knock sounded on the side 
door and, without waiting for a reply, Maria Max- 
well entered, a cape thrown about her shoulders, a 
lantern in one hand, and in the other a covered pitcher 
from which steam was curling. 

"I heard David howling and I went to our gate to 
look ; I saw that there wasn't a light in the farm-house 
and so knew that something was the matter. No 
fire in the stove and the room quite chilly! Where 
is that neighbour of yours in the other half of the house ? 
Couldn't he have brought you in a few sticks?" 



INS AND OUTS OF THE MATTER 339 

"He isn't ter hum just now," replied Amos, in 
tones that were unnecessarily feeble, while at the same 
time an idea entered his brain that almost made him 
chuckle; but the sound which was quenched in his 
throat only came to Maria as an uncomfortable struggle 
for breath that hastened her exit to the woodpile by 
the side fence for the material to revive the fire. In 
going round the house, her arms laden with logs, she 
bumped into the figure of The Man leading his bicycle 
across the grass, which deadened his footfall, as the 
lantern she carried blinded her to all objects not within 
its direct rays. 

"Maria Maxwell! Is Opie ill again? You must 
not carry such a heavy load !" he exclaimed all in one 
breath, as he very quickly transferred the logs to his 
own arms, and was making the fire in the open stove 
almost before she had regained the porch, so that 
when she had lighted a lamp and drawn the turkey- 
red curtains, the reflections of the flames began to 
dance on the wall and cheerfulness suddenly replaced 
gloom. 

Still Amos sat in an attitude of dejection. Thank- 
ing The Man for his aid, but taking no further notice 
of him, Maria began to heat the broth which was con- 
tained in the pitcher, asking Amos at the same time 



340 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

if he did not think that he would feel better in 
bed. 

"I dunno's place has much to do with it," he 
grumbled; "this can't go on no longer, it's doing for 
me, that it is !" 

Maria, thinking that he referred to bodily illness, 
hastened the preparations for bed, and The Man, 
feeling helpless as all men do when something active 
is being done in which they have no part, rose to go, 
and, with his hand on the latch of the porch door, 
said in a low voice: "If I might help you in any way, I 
should be very glad; I do not quite like leaving you 
alone with this old fellow, — you may need help in 
getting him to bed. Tell me frankly, would you like 
me to stay?" 

"Frankly I would rather you would not," said 
Maria, yet in so cordial a tone that no offence could 
be gathered from it in any way. 

So the door opened and closed again and Maria 
began the rather laborious task of coaxing the old man 
to bed. When once there, the medicine given, and 
the soup taken, which she could not but notice that he 
swallowed greedily, she seated herself before the fire, 
resolving that, if Amos did not feel better by nine 
o'clock, she would have Barney come over for the 



INS AND OUTS OF THE MATTER 341 

night, as of course she must return to be near the 
Infant. 

As she sat there she pictured for the hundredth 
time how she would invest her little capital and re- 
arrange her life, if Amos consented to sell her the farm, 
— how best to restore the home without elaborating 
the care of it, and take one or two people to live with 
her who had been ill or needed rest in cheerful sur- 
roundings. Not always the same two, for that is para- 
lyzing after a time when the freshness of energetic 
influence wears off; but her experience among her 
friends told her that in a city's social life there was an 
endless supply of overwrought nerves and bodies. 

The having a home was the motive, the guests the 
necessity. Then she closed her eyes again and saw 
the upper portion of the rich meadow land that had 
lain fallow so long turned into a flower farm wherein 
she would raise blossoms for a well-known city dealer 
who had, owing to his artistic skill, a market for his 
wares and decorative skill in all the cities of the eastern 
coast. She had consulted him and he approved her 
plan. 

The meadow was so sheltered that it would easily 
have a two weeks' lead over the surrounding country, 
and the desirability of her crop should lie in its 



342 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

perfection rather than rarity. Single violets in frames, 
lilies-of-the-valley for Easter and spring weddings, 
sweet peas, in separate colours, peonies, Iris, Gladioli, 
asters, and Dahlias : three acres in all. Upon these 
was her hope built, for with a market waiting, what 
lay between her and success but work? 

Yes, work and the farm. Then came the vision 
of human companionship, such as her cousin Bartram 
and Mary Penrose shared. Could flowers and a home 
make up for it? After all, what is home? 

Her thoughts tangled and snapped abruptly, but 
of one thing she was sure. She could no longer endure 
teaching singing to assorted tone-deaf children, many 
of whom could no more keep on the key than a cow 
on the tight rope ; and when she found a talented child 
and gave it appreciative attention, she was oftentimes 
officially accused of favouritism by some disgruntled 
parent with a political pull, for that was what contact 
with the public schools of a large city had taught her 
to expect. 

A log snapped — she looked at the clock. It was 
exactly nine ! Going to the window, she pulled back 
the curtain; the old moon, that has a fashion of work- 
ing northward at this time, was rising from a location 
wholly new to her. 



INS AND OUTS OF THE MATTER 343 

She looked at Amos; he was very still, evidently 
asleep, yet unnaturally so, for the regular breathing 
of unconsciousness was not there and the firelight 
shadows made him look pinched and strange. Sud- 
denly she felt alone and panic stricken; she forgot the 
tests so well known to her of pulse taking, and all the 
countryside tales of strokes and seizures came back to 
her. She did not hesitate a moment; a man was in 
the same house and she felt entirely outside of the 
strength of her own will. 

Going to the separating door, she found it locked, 
on which side she could not be sure ; but seeing a long 
key hanging by the clock she tried it, on general prin- 
ciples. It turned hard, and the lock finally yielded with 
a percussive snap. Stepping into the hall, she saw a 
light in the front of the house, toward which she hur- 
ried. The Man was seated by a table that was strewn 
with books, papers, and draughting instruments; he 
was not working, but in his turn gazing at the flames 
from a smouldering hearth fire, though his coat was off 
and the window open, for it was not cold but merely 
chilly. 

Hearing her step, he started, turned, and, as he saw 
her upon the threshold, made a grab for his coat and 
swung it into place. It is strange, this instinct in 



344 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

civilized man of not appearing coatless before a woman 
he respects. 

"Amos Opie is very ill, I'm afraid," she said gravely, 
without the least self- consciousness or thought of 
intrusion. 

"Shall I go for the doctor?" said The Man, reaching 
for his hat and at the same time opening the long cup- 
board by the chimney, from which he took a leather- 
covered flask. 

"No, not yet; please come and look at him. Yes, 
I want you very much!" This in answer to a ques- 
tioning look in his eyes. 

Standing together by the bed, they saw the old man's 
eyelids quiver and then open narrowly. The Man 
poured whiskey from his flask into a glass, added water, 
and held it to Amos's lips, where it was quickly and 
completely absorbed ! 

Next he put a finger on Amos's pulse and after a 
minute closed his watch with a snap, but without 
comment. 

"You feel better now, Opie?" he questioned pres- 
ently in a tone that, to the old man at least, was sig- 
nificant. 

"What gave you this turn? Is there anything on 
your mind? You might as well tell now, as you will 



INS AND OUTS OF THE MATTER 345 

have to sooner or later, and Miss Maxwell must go 
home presently. You'll have to put up with me for 
the rest of the night and a man isn't as cheerful a com- 
panion as a woman — is he, Amos?" 

"No, yer right there, Mr. Blake, and it's the idee 
o' loneliness that's upsettin' me ! Come down ter 
facts, Mr. Blake, it's the offers I've had fer the farm 
— yourn and hern — and my wishin' ter favour both 
and yet not give it up myself, and the whole's too 
much fer me!" 

"Hers! Has Miss Maxwell made a bid for the farm? 
What do you want it for?" he said, turning quickly 
to Maria, who coloured and then replied quietly — 
"To live in! which is exactly what you said when I 
asked you a similar question a couple of months 
ago!" 

"The p'int is," continued Amos, quickly growing 
more wide awake, and addressing the ceiling as a 
neutral and impartial listener, "that Mr. Blake 
has offered me five hundred more than Maria Max- 
well, and though I want ter favour her (in buyin', 
property goes to the highest bidder; it's only contract 
work that's fetched by the lowest, and I never did 
work by contract — it's too darned frettin'), I can't 
throw away good money, and neither of 'em yet knows 



346 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

that whichsomever of 'em buys it has got ter give me a 
life right ter live in the summer kitchen and fetch my 
drinkin' water from the well in the porch ! A lone 
widder man's a sight helplesser 'n a widder, but yet he 
don't get no sympathy!" 

The Man from Everywhere began to laugh, and 
catching Maria's eye she joined him heartily. "How 
do you mean to manage?" he asked in a way that 
barred all thought of intrusion. 

" I'm going to have a flower farm and take in two 
invalids — no, not cranks or lunatics, but merely 
tired people," she added, a little catch coming in her 
voice. 

"Then you had better begin with me, for I'm pre- 
cious tired of taking care of myself, and here is Amos 
also applying, so I do not see but what your establish- 
ment is already complete!" 

Then, as he saw by her face that the subject was 
not one for jest, he said, in his hearty way that Mary 
Penrose likes, "Why not let me buy the place, as 
mine was the first offer, put it in order, and then 
lease it to you for three years, with the privilege of 
buying if you find that your scheme succeeds ? If 
the house is too small to allow two lone men a room 
each, I can add a lean-to to match Opie's summer 



INS AND OUTS OF THE MATTER 347 

kitchen, for you know sometimes a woman finds it 
comfortable to have a man in the house!" 

Maria did not answer at first, but was looking at 
the one uncurtained window, where the firelight again 
made opals of the panes. Then turning, she said, 
"I will think over your offer, Mr. Blake, if everything 
may be upon a strictly business basis. But how about 
Amos? He seems better, and I ought to be going. 
I do not know why I should have been so foolish, 
but for a moment he did not seem to breathe, and I 
thought it was a stroke." 

"I'm comin' too all in good time, now my mind's 
relieved," replied the old man, with a chuckle, "and 
I think I'll weather to-night fer the sake o' fixin' that 
deed termorrow, Mr. Blake, if you'll kindly give me 
jest a thimbleful more o' that old liquor o' yourn — 
I kin manage it fust rate without the water, thank 
'ee!" 

The Man followed Maria to the door and out into 
the night. He did not ask her if he might go with 
her — he simply walked by her side for once unques- 
tioned. 

Maria spoke first, and rather more quickly and 
nervously than usual: "I suppose you think that my 
scheme in wishing the farm is a madcap one, but I'm 



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in:; and OUTS OF THE MATTER 349 

inj' oi accepting cousin Mary's offci to stay with hei 
and teach the [nfanl and a couple oi othci children 
this winter, win* ii may be well for superintending 
the work, as 1 suppose yon are oil again wiili the 
swallows, as usual." 

"oli, no, yon forgcl the reservoir and the tunnelling 
oi Three Brothers foi the aqucducl to BridgetonI" 

"Then lei i! be March first I" said Maria, after 
hesitating a moment, during which she stood looking 
bai l- ;ii Opal Farm lying al peace in di< moonlight) 
"only, in making the improvements, please do them as 
ii loi any one else, and remember thai ii is to be a 
:,iii< ily business affair J" 

"And why should yon lliinl- thai I would deal 

otherwise by you?" Ths Ma/n said quickly, stepping 
close, where li«' could see the expression oi her face. 
Maria, feeling herseil cornered, did nol answer 
immediately, and hall turned her face away, onlyfor 
a moment, however. Facing him, she said, "Because 

men ol yoiii Stamp •'"«' always gOOd tO women, 

always doing them kindnesses both l»ij', and little 
(ash Maj y Penrose), and sometimes kindness hurts I" 
"Well, then, the lease and all pertaining to ii shall 
be strictly in the Him- of business until yon your, < 11 
.1,1 for a modification, bul be careful, 1 may be a 



350 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

hard landlord!" Then, dropping his guard, he said 
suddenly, "Why is it that you and I — man and 
woman — temperamentally alike, both interested in the 
same things, and of an age to know what in life is 
worth while, should stand so aloof? Is there no 
more human basis upon which I can persuade 
you to come to Opal Farm when it is mine? Give 
me a month, three months, — lessen the distance 
you always keep between us, and give me leave to 
convince you ! Why will you insist upon deliberately 
keeping up a barrier raised in the beginning when I 
was too stupidly at home in your cousin's house to 
see that I might embarrass you? Frankly, do you 
dislike me?" 

Maria began two different sentences, stumbled, and 
stopped short; then drawing herself up and looking 
The Man straight in the face, she said, "I have kept 
a barrier between us, and deliberately, as you say, 
but — " here she faltered — "it was because I found 
you too interesting; the barrier was to protect my 
own peace of mind more than to rebuff you." 

"Then I may try to convince you that my plan is 
best?" 

"Yes," said Maria, with a glint of her mischievous 
smile, "if you have plenty of time to spare." 



INS AND OUT OF THE MATTER 351 

"And you will give me no more encouragement than 
this? No good wish or omen?" 

"Yes," said Maria again, "I wish that you may 
succeed — " here she slipped her hand in the belt 
of her gown and drew out a little chamois bag attached 
to her watch, "and for an omen, here is the opal you 
gave me — you give it a happy interpretation and one 
is very apt to lose an unset stone, you know!" 

But as neither walls nor leaves have tongues, Mary 
Penrose never learned the real ins and outs of this 
matter. 



. ■;:: 

CHE ' .-VI ;? WHITE FLOWERS 

Barfjaia Cas3f is : " - .". wee 

/• . /. - " • : . . . - - . - 

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. .. .z zi: £BB i - - z:? z;z: . - 
:. ' . - ] -. . - i _.-..... _zz~- 

■ - s " - . - . . ■ - -. . iosr sfeg zz> 

a :r:zz : z . . . : . . z - z . . - - 

. - Joys ;?ralfenggd I zz :: i z.zz 

jrtiae B&rffia and back . Eg ■:..- -~. zz.-.Vz-jz:::- 

:©OEse zzzzjzz; • aadl reSwg 

;.-■.-._.-"..-. z ...-.- . | - ■ z- zz 

: : ; - 3 z - i - : 

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-;z::z;S sad fete blooming :: 

- - - - - D feHffig Zl: 

~ - - - ; :: ::zz 

: - . - -.-..--.■ zz:_ zzr 

: ■? - waadeEOip zzi;zr _- - - : 

- . z :z . - ; ;z; E : sas . . . is z -z ~- ;: 



THE VALUE OF WHITE FLOWERS 353 

interesting as the distribution of colour, and especially 
the dominance of white flowers in any landscape or 
garden in which they appear. 

In your last letter you speak of the preponderance 
of white among the flowering shrubs as well as the 
early blossoms of spring. That this is the case is 
one of the strong points in the decorative value of 
shrubs, and in listing seeds for the hardy or summer 
beds or sorting the bushes for the rosary, great care 
should be taken to have a liberal sprinkling of white, 
for the white in the flower kingdom is what the 
diamond is in the mineral world, necessary as a 
setting for all other colours, as well as for its own 
intrinsic worth. 

Look at a well- cut sapphire of flawless tint. It is 
beautiful surely, but in some way its depth of colour 
needs illumination. Surround it with evenly matched 
diamonds and at once life enters into it. 

Fill a tall jar with spires of larkspur of the purest 
blue known to garden flowers. Unless the sun shines 
fully on them they seem to swallow light; mingle 
with them some stalks of white foxgloves, Canter- 
bury bells, or surround them with Madonna lilies, 
a fringe of spirea, or the slender Deutzia gracilis, more 
frequently seen in florists' windows than in the garden, 



354 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

and a new meaning is given the blue flower; the 
black shadows disappear from its depth and sky 
reflections replace them. 

The blue- fringed gentian, growing deep among the 
dark grasses of low meadows, may be passed over 
without enthusiasm as a dull purplish flower by one 
to whom its possibilities are unknown; but come 
upon it backgrounded by Michaelmas daisies or 
standing alone in a meadow thick strewn with the 
white stars of grass of Parnassus or wands of crystal 
ladies' tresses, and all at once it becomes, — 

"Blue, blue, as if the sky let fall 
A flower from its cerulean wall ! " 

The same white setting enhances the brighter colours, 
though in a less degree than blue, which is, next to 
magenta, one of the most difficult colours to place in 
the garden. In view of this fact it is not strange that 
it is a comparatively unusual hue in the flower world 
and a very rare one among our neighbourly eastern 
birds, the only three that wear it conspicuously being 
the bluebird, indigo bird, and the bluejay. 

It is this useful quality as a setting that gives value 
to many white flowers lacking intrinsic beauty, like 
sweet alyssum, candy-tuft, the yarrows, and the double 
feverfew. In buying seeds of flowers in mixed varie- 



THE VALUE OF WHITE FLOWERS 355 

ties, such as asters, verbenas, Sweet-William, pansies, 
or any flower in short that has a white variety, it is 
always safe to buy a single packet of the latter, be- 
cause I have often noticed that the usual mixtures, for 
some reason, are generally shy not only of the white 
but often of the very lightest tints as well. 

In selecting asters the average woman gardener 
may not be prepared to buy the eight or ten different 
types that please her fancy in as many separate colours ; 
a mixture of each must suffice, but a packet of white 
of each type should be added if the best results are 
to be achieved. 

The same applies to sweet peas when planted in 
mixture; at least six ounces of either pure white or 
very light, and therefore quasi- neutral tints harmo- 
nizing with all darker colours, should be added. For 
it is in the lighter tints of this flower that its butterfly 
characteristics are developed. Keats had not the 
heavy deep-hued or striped varieties in mind when 
he wrote of 

"... Sweet Peas on tiptoe for a flight, 
With wings of gentle flush : o'er delicate white, 
And taper fingers catching at all things 
To bind them all about with tiny rings." 

If you examine carefully the "flats" of pansies 

growing from mixed seed and sold in the market-places 



356 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

or at local florists', you will notice that in eight out of 
ten the majority of plants are of the darker colours. 

There are white varieties of almost every garden 
flower that blooms between the last frost of spring 
and winter ice. The snowdrop of course is white 
and the tiny little single English violet of brief 
though unsurpassing fragrance; we have white cro- 
cuses, white hyacinths, narcissus, lilies-of-the-valley, 
Iris, white rock phlox, or moss-pink, Madonna and 
Japan lilies, gladiolus, white campanulas of many 
species, besides the well-known Canterbury bells, white 
hollyhocks, larkspurs, sweet Sultan, poppies, phloxes, 
and white annual as well as hardy chrysanthe- 
mums. 

Almost all the bedding plants, like the geranium, 
begonia, ageratum, lobelia, etc., have white species. 
There are white pinks of all types, white roses, and 
wherever crimson rambler is seen Madame Plantier 
should be his bride ; white stocks, hollyhocks, verbenas, 
zinnias, Japanese anemones, Arabis or rock cress, 
and white fraxinella; white Lupins, nicotiana, even- 
ing primroses, pentstemons, portulaca, primulas, 
vincas, and even a whitish nasturtium, though its 
flame- coloured partner salvia declines to have her 
ardour so modified. 



THE VALUE OF WHITE FLOWERS 357 

Among vines we have the white wisteria, several 
white clematis, the moon-flower, and other Ipomeas, 
many climbing and trailing roses, the English polygo- 
num, the star cucumber, etc., so that there is no lack 
of this harmonizing and modifying colour (that is not 
a colour after all) if we will but use it intelligently. 

Aside from the setting of flower to flower, white 
has another and wider function. As applied to the 
broader landscape it is not only a maker of per- 
spective, but it often indicates a picture and fairly 
pulls it from obscurity, giving the same lifelike round- 
ness that the single white dot lends in portraiture to 
the correctly tinted but still lifeless eye. 

Take for instance a wide field without groups of 
trees to divide and let it be covered only with grass, 
no matter how green and luxuriant, and there is a 
monotonous flatness, that disappears the moment the 
field is blooming with daisies or snowy wild asters. 

Follow the meandering line of a brook through 
April meadows. Where does the eye pause with the 
greatest sense of pleasure and restfulness? On the 
gold of the marsh marigolds edging the water? or on 
the silver- white plumes of shad- bush that wave and 
beckon across the marshes, as they stray from moist 
ground toward the light woods ? Could any gay colour 



358 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

whatsoever compete with the snow of May apple or- 
chards ? — the fact that the snow is often rose tinged 
only serving to accentuate the contrasting white. 

In the landscape all light tints that at a distance 
have the value of white are equally to the purpose, 
and can be used for hedges, boundaries, or what may 
be called punctuation points. German or English 
Iris and peonies are two very useful plants for this 
purpose, flowering in May and June and for the rest 
of the season holding their substantial, well- set- up 
foliage. These two plants, if they receive even or- 
dinary good treatment, may also be relied upon for 
masses of uniform bloom held well above the leaves; 
and while pure white peonies are a trifle monoto- 
nous and glaring unless blended with the blush, rose, 
salmon, and cream tints, there are any number of 
white iris both tall and dwarf with either self-toned 
flowers, or pencilled, feathered, or bordered with a 
variety of delicate tints, and others equally valuable 
of pale shades of lilac or yellow, the recurved falls 
being of a different tint. 

Thus does Nature paint her pictures and give us 
hints to follow, and yet a certain art phase proclaims 
Nature's colour combinations crude and rudimentary 
forsooth ! 



THE VALUE OF WHITE FLOWERS 359 

Nature is never crude except through an unsuc- 
cessful human attempt to reproduce the uncopyable. 
Give one of these critics all the colour combinations 
of the evening sky and let him manipulate them with 
wires and what a scorched omelet he would make of 
the most simple and natural sunset ! 

While Nature does not locate the different colours 
on the palette to please the eye of man, but to carry 
out the various steps in the great plan of perpetuation, 
yet on that score it is all done with a sense of colour 
value, else why are the blossoms of deep woods, as well 
as the night- blooming flowers that must lure the moth 
and insect seekers through the gloom, white or light- 
coloured ? 

In speaking of white or pale flowers there is one low 
shrub with evergreen leaves and bluish-white flowers 
that I saw blooming in masses for the first time 
not far from Boston in early May. There was 
a slight hollow where the sun lay, that was well 
protected from the wind. This sloped gently 
upward toward some birches that margined a pond. 
The birches themselves were as yet but in tassel, 
the near-by grass was green in spots only, and yet here 
in the midst of the chill, reluctant promise of early 
spring was firmness of leaf and clustered flowers of 



360 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

almost hothouse texture and fragrance. Not a single 
spray or a dozen, but hundreds of them, covered the 
bushes. 

This shrub is Daphne cneorum, a sturdier evergreen 
cousin of Daphne mezereum, that brave- hearted shrub 
that often by the south wall of my garden hangs its 
little pink flower clusters upon bare twigs as early 
as the tenth of March. Put it on your list of desir- 
ables, for aside from any other situation it will do 
admirably to edge laurels or rhododendrons and so 
bring early colour of the rosy family hue to brighten 
their dark glossy leaves, for the sight and the scent 
thereof made me resolve to cover a certain nook with 
it, where the sun lodges first every spring. I am 
planting mine this autumn, which is necessary with 
things of such early spring vitality. 

Another garden point akin to colour value in that 
it makes or mars has, I may say, run itself into my 
vision quite sharply and painfully this summer, and 
many a time have I rubbed my eyes and looked again 
in wonder that such things could be. This is the 
spoiling of a well-thought-out garden by the obtrusive 
staking of its plants. Of course there are many 
tall and bushy flowers — hollyhocks, golden glow, 
cosmos — that have not sufficient strength of stem 




Daphne Cneorum. 



THE VALUE OF WHITE FLOWERS 361 

to stand alone when the weight of soaking rain is added 
to their flowers and the wind comes whirling to chal- 
lenge them to a dizzy dance, which they cannot 
refuse, and it inevitably turns their heavy heads and 
leaves them prone. 

Besides these there are the lower, slender, but top- 
heavy lilies, gladioli, carnations, and the like, that 
must not be allowed to soil their pretty faces in 
the mud. A little thinking must be done and stakes 
suitable to the height and girth of each plant chosen. 
If the purse allows, green- painted stakes of sizes vary- 
ing from eighteen inches for carnations to six feet for 
Dahlias are the most convenient ; but lacking these, the 
natural bamboos, that may be bought in bundles by 
the hundred, in canes of eight feet or more, and after- 
ward cut in lengths to suit, are very useful, being light, 
tough, and inconspicuous. 

In supporting a plant, remember that the object is 
as nearly as possible to supplement its natural stem. 
Therefore cut the stake a little shorter than the top 
of the foliage and drive it firmly at the back of the 
plant, fastening the main stem to the stake by loosely 
woven florist's string. 

If, on the other hand, the plant to be supported is a 
maze of side branches, like the cosmos, or individual 



362 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

bushes blended so as to form a hedge, a row of 
stout poles, also a little lower than the bushes, should 
be set firmly behind them, the twine being woven care- 
fully in and out among the larger branches, and then 
tightened carefully, so that the whole plant is gradu- 
ally drawn back and yet the binding string is concealed. 

If it is possible to locate cosmos, hollyhocks, and 
Dahlias (especially Dahlias) in the same place for sev- 
eral successive years, a flanking trellis fence of light 
posts, with a single top and bottom rail and poultry 
wire of a three- inch mesh between, will be found 
a good investment. Against this the plants may be 
tethered in several places, and thus not only separate 
branches can be supported naturally, but individual 
flowers as well, in the case of the large exhibition 
Dahlias. 

Practicable as is the proper carrying out of the 
matter, in a score of otherwise admirable gardens we 
have seen the results of weeks and months of prepa- 
ration either throttled and bound martyrlike to a stake 
or twisted and tethered, until the natural, habit of 
growth was wholly changed. In some cases the plants 
were so meshed in twine and choked that it seemed as 
if a spiteful fairy had woven a "cat's cradle" over them 
or that they had followed out the old proverb and, 



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THE VALUE OF WHITE FLOWERS 363 

having been given enough rope, literally hanged 
themselves. In other gardens green stakes were set 
at intervals (I noticed it in the case of gladioli and 
carnations especially) and strings carried from one 
stake to the other, leaving each plant in the centre of 
a twine square, like chessmen imprisoned on the board. 
But the most terrible example of all was where either 
the owner or the gardener, for they were not one and 
the same, had purchased a quantity of half- inch 
pine strips at a lumber yard and proceeded to 
scatter them about his beds at random, regardless of 
height or suitability, very much as if some neighbour- 
ing Fourth of July celebration had showered the place 
with rocket sticks. 

If your young German has time in the intervals 
of tree-planting and trellis- making, get him to trim 
some of the cedars of a diameter of two or three inches 
and stack them away for Dahlia poles. Next season 
you will become a victim of these gorgeous velvet 
flowers, I foresee, especially as I have fully a barrel 
of the "potatoes" of some very handsome varieties 
to bestow upon you. Make the most of Meyer, for 
he will probably grow melancholy as soon as cool 
weather sets in and he thinks of winter evenings and 
a sweetheart he has left in the fatherland ! 



364 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

We have had several Germans and they all had 
lieber schatz, for jealousy or the scorn of whom 
they had left home, were for the same reason loath 
to stay away from it, and at the same time, owing to 
contending emotions, were unable to work so that 
they might return. 

Are you not thinking about returning to your indoor 
bed and board again? With warm weather I fly 
out of the door as a second nature, but with a smart 
promise of frost I turn about again and everything — 
furniture, pictures, books, and the dear people them- 
selves — seems refreshingly new and wholly lovable ! 

If vou are thinking of making out a book list of 
vour needs as an answer to your mother's or your "in- 
law's" query, "What do you want for Christmas?" write 
at the beginning — Bailey's Cyclopedia of American 
Horticulture, in red ink. Lavinia and Martin Cortright 
gave it to us last Christmas, the clearly printed first 
edition on substantial paper in four thick volumes, 
mind you, and it is the referee and court of appeals of 
the Garden, You, and I in general and myself in 
particular. Not only will it tell you even-thing that 
you wish or ought to know, but do it completely and 
truthfully. In short it is the perfect antidote to 
Garden Goozle! 



XIX 
PANDORA'S CHEST 

(Mary Penrose to Barbara Campbell) 

Woodridge, October 10. Nearly a month of pen 
silence on my part, during which I have felt many 
times as if I must go from one to another of our chosen 
trees in the river woods and shake the leaves down 
so that the transplanting might proceed forthwith, 
lest the early winter that Amos Opie predicts both 
by a goose bone and certain symptoms of his own 
shall overtake us. Be this as it may, the leaves thus 
far prefer their airy quarters to huddling upon the 
damp ground. 

However, there is another reason for haste more 
urgent than the fear of frost — the melancholy vein 
that you predicted we should find in Meyer is fast 
developing, and as we wish to have him leave us in a 
perfectly natural way, we think it best that his stay 
shall not be prolonged. At first he seemed not only 
absorbed by his work and to enjoy the garden and 
especially the river woods, but the trees and water 
rushing by. 

365 



366 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

A week ago a change came over him; he became 
morose and silent, and yesterday when I was admiring, 
half aloud, the reflection of a beautiful scarlet oak 
mirrored in the still backwater of the river, he paused 
in the kneeling position in which he was loosening 
the grasp of a white flowering dogwood, and first throw- 
ing out his arms and then beating his chest with them, 
exclaimed — " Other good have trees and water than 
for the eye to see; they can surely hang and drown 
the man the heart of whom holds much sorrow, and 
that man is I !" 

Of course I knew that it was something a little out 
of the ordinary state of affairs that had sent a man of 
his capability to tramp about as a vagrant sort of 
labourer, but I had no previous idea that melancholy 
had taken such a grip upon him. Much do I prefer 
Larry, with periods of hilarity ending in peaceful 
"shlape." Certain peoples have their peculiar racial 
characteristics, but after all, love of an occasional drink 
seems a more natural proposition than a tendency 
to suicide, while as to the relative value of the labour 
itself, that is always an individual not a racial matter. 

I too am feeling the domestic lure of cooler weather. 
All the day I wish to be in the open, but when the 
earlier twilight closes in, the house, with its lamps, 



PANDORA'S CHEST 367 

hearth fires, and voices, weaves a new spell about me, 
though having once opened wide the door of outdoors 
it can never be closed. 

Do you remember the Masque 0} Pandora, and 
the mysterious chest ? 



"Pandora 
Hast thou never 



Lifted the lid ? 



Epimetheus 
The oracle forbids. 
Safely concealed there from all mortal eyes 
Forever sleeps the secret of the Gods. 
Seek not to know what they have hidden from thee 
Till they themselves reveal it." 

Bart was reading it aloud to me last night. Prose 
read aloud always frets me, because one's mind travels 
so much faster than the spoken words and arrives at 
the conclusion, even if not always the right one, long 
before the printed climax is reached ; but with good 
poetry it is different — the thoughts are so crystallized 
that the sound of a melodious voice liberates them more 
swiftly. 

Verily Pandora's Chest has been opened this season 
here in the garden; the gods were evidently not un- 
willing and turned the lock for me, though perhaps 



368 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

I have thrown back the cover too rashly, for out has 
flown, instead of dire disaster, ambition in a flock of 
winged ideals, hopes, and wishes masquerading cleverly 
as necessities, that will keep me alert in trying to 
overtake and capture them all my life long. 

Last night, once again comfortably settled in the 
den, we took inventory of the season's doings, and un- 
like most ventures, find there is nothing to write upon 
the nether page that records loss. Of the money set 
aside for the improvement of the knoll half yet remains, 
allowing for the finishing of the tree transplanting. 
Into this remainder we are preparing to tuck the filling 
for the rose bed, a goodly store of lily bulbs, some 
flowering shrubs, an openwork wire fence to be a 
vine-covered screen betwixt us and the road, instead 
of the broken rattling pickets, a new harness for Romeo 
to wear when he returns home, as a thank offering 
for his comfortable services (really the bridle of the 
old one is quite scratched to bits upon the various 
trees and rough fence rails to which he has been 
tethered), and last of all, what do you think? Three 
guesses may be easily wasted without hitting the mark, 
for instead of, as we expected, tearing down the old barn, 
our summer camp, we are going to remodel it to be 
a permanent outdoor shelter. It is to have a wide 



PANDORA'S CHEST 369 

chimney and fireplace at one end, before which our 
beds may be drawn campfire fashion if it is too cool, 
and adjustable shutters so that it may be either merely 
a roof or a fairly substantial cabin and at all possible 
seasons a study and playroom for us all. Then too 
we shall overlook "Maria Maxwell's Experiment," as 
Bart calls her scheme of running the Opal Farm. 
We were heartily glad to know that she had leased 
and not bought it, but we were much surprised to 
learn, first through the village paper, and not the man 
and woman concerned, that "Mr. Ross Blake, the 
engineer in charge of the construction of the new res- 
ervoir, believing in the future of the real- estate boom in 
Woodridge (we didn't know there was one), has recently 
purchased the Amos Opie farm as an investment, the 
deed being to-day recorded in the town house. He has 
already leased it for a young ladies' seminary, pending 
its remodelling, for which he himself is drawing the 
plans." 

Dear Man from Everywhere! much as I like Maria, 
I think he would be the more restful neighbour of the 
two. What a complete couple they might have made, 
but that is a bit of drift thought that I have put out 
of my head, for if any two people ever had a chance 
this summer to fall in love if they had the capacity, 



370 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

it was Maria and The Man, and the strange part of it 
is that as far as may be known neither is nourishing 
the sentiment of a melancholy past and no other 
present man or woman stands between; perhaps it is 
some uncanny Opal spell that stays them. Yet even 
as it is, in this farm restoration both are unconsciously 
preparing to take a peep into Pandora's Chest full of 
the unknown, so let us hope the gods are willing. 

Hallowe'en. The Infant and Anastasia, her memo- 
ries revived by Larry's voluble and personally 
adapted folk-lore, are preparing all sorts of traps and 
feasts for good luck and fairies, while Lady Lazy is 
content to look at the log fire and plan for putting 
the garden to sleep. Yesterday I finished taking 
up my collection of peonies, Iris, and hardy chrysan- 
themums that had been "promised" at various farm 
gardens beyond the river woods, and duly cleared off 
my indebtednesses for the same with a varied assort- 
ment of articles ranging from gladioli bulbs, which 
seem to multiply by cube root here, to a pair of curl- 
ing tongs, an article long coveted by a simple-minded 
woman of more than middle age, for the resuscita- 
tion of her Sunday front locks, and which though 
willing to acquire by barter she, as a deacon's wife, 



PANDORA'S CHEST 371 

had a prejudice against buying openly over the 
counter. 

Meyer has gone, having relapsed into compara- 
tive cheerfulness a few days before his departure on 
the receipt of a bulky letter which, in spite of the wear 
and tear of travel, remained heavily scented, coupled 
with Bart's assurance that he could remain in America 
another four weeks and still be at a certain Baltic 
town of an unpronounceable name in time for Christ- 
mas. 

In spite of heavy frosts my pansies are a daily cheer, 
but it is really of no use for even the flowers of very 
hardy plants to struggle on against nature's decree of 
a winter sleeping time; the wild animals all come 
more or less under its spell, and the dogs, the nearest 
creatures of all to man, as soon as snow covers the 
ground and they have their experience of ice-cut feet, 
drowse as near the fire as possible and in case of 
a stove almost under it. I wonder if nature did not 
intend that we also should have at least a half- drowsy 
brooding time, instead of making the cold season so 
often a period of stress and strain and short days 
stretched into long nights. If so, we have taken the 
responsibility of acting for ourselves, of flying in 
nature's face in this as in many other ways. 



372 THE GARDEN, YOU, AND I 

Does it ever seem to you strange that our con- 
trariness began within the year of our legendary 
creation, when Eve came to misery not by gazing 
in a bonnet shop, but when innocently wandering in 
her garden, the most beautiful of earth ? By which we 
women gardeners should all take warning, for though 
the Tree of Life may be found in every garden, 

" Yet sin and sorrow's pedigree 
Spring from a garden and a tree." 

December 10. Snow a month earlier than last year, 
but we rejoice in it, for it will keep the winds from the 
roots of the trees not yet wholly settled and comfort- 
able in their new homes. The young hemlocks are 
bewitching in their wreaths and garlands, and one or 
two older trees give warmth to the woods beyond the 
Opal Farm and sweep the low, snow- covered meadow, 
that looks like a crystal lake, with their feathery 
branches. The cedars were beautiful in the May 
woods and so are they now, where I see them through 
the gap standing sentinels against the white of the 
brush lot. It seems to me that we cannot have too 
many evergreens any more than we can have too much 
cheerfulness. 

There are no paths in the garden now, a hint that 
our feet must travel elsewhere for a time, and I 



PANDORA'S CHEST 373 

confess that Lady Lazy has not yet redeemed herself, 
and at present likes her feet to fall upon soft rugs. 
The Infant's gray squirrels, Punch and Judy, and the 
persistent sparrows have found their way to the house, 
taking their daily rations from the roof of the shed. 
Punch, stuffed to repletion, has a cache under the 
old syringa bushes, the sparrows seeming to escort 
him in his travels to and fro, but whether for compan- 
ionship or in hope of gain, who can say? 

The plans for the remodelling of Opal Farm-house 
are really very attractive and yet it will be delight- 
fully simple to care for. Maria and The Man have 
agreed better about them than over anything I have 
ever heard them discuss ; but then, as it is purely a 
business arrangement, I suppose that Maria feels free 
from her usual pernickety restraint. 

We surmise that either she has much more laid 
by than we supposed or she is waxing extrava- 
gant, for she has had the opal, that The Man gave her 
once in exchange for an old coin, surrounded with 
very good diamonds and set as a ring ! Really I never 
before noticed what fine strong white hands she has. 

I shall ask Father Penrose for the Cyclopedia — 
it has a substantial sound that may soften his suspicion 
that we are not practical and were not properly grieved 
over the loss of the hens ! 



XX 

EPILOGUE 

(dictated) 

Woodridge, January 3. In the face of circum- 
stances that prevent my holding the pen in my own 
hand, I am resolved that the first chronicle of the New 
Year shall be mine, — for by me it has sent The Gar- 
den, You, and I a new member and our own garden a 
new tree, an oak we hope. 

The Infant is exultant at the evident and direct result 
of her dealings with the fairies, and keeps a plate of 
astonishing goodies by the nursery hearth fire; these, 
if the fairies do not feast upon personally, are appre- 
ciated by their horses, the mice. 

His name is John Bartram Penrose, a good one to 

conjure with gardenwise, though he is no kin to the 

original. He has fresh- air lungs, and if he does not 

wax strong of limb and develop into a naturalist of 

some sort, he cannot blame his parents or their garden 

vacation. 

MARY PENROSE, 

her /$* mark. 

374 




Punch . . . has a cache under the old syringa bushes." 



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A cheerful little mustard-shaped flower 
borne in short, thick spikes, useful 
for edgings or to supply the white 
setting necessary to groups of party- 
coloured flowers. 


A rapid -growing, tender annual from 
India, and while rather stiff in form 
of growth, very decorative for the 
summer borders surrounding a sun- 
dial. The flowers, like compact, 
double roses, are very useful for 
set table decorations and may be 
used in many ways. 


Showy flowers for summer beds, not 
good for cutting, as they grow 
sleepy indoors and in cloudy 
weather. 


A sturdy white flower useful for edg- 
ings in the same way as sweet 
alyssum. May be sown in fall for 
early flowering. 


a 


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White, peach, 
carmine, laven- 
der, rose, scar- 
let, spotted,and 
straw 


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orange 
White 


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Calendula-PoT Marigold 
" officinalis grandi- 

flora 
" Pongei fl. pi. 


Candytuft 
Iberis Coronaria 
Rocket Candytuft 



One of the most satisfactory of the 
taller-growing annuals, the flowers 
having some of the qualities of an 
everlasting, and making fine button- 
hole flowers or house bouquets. The 
Sweet Sultans are delightfully fra- 
grant, and the Cornflower one 
of the finest of our blue flowers. 
They should be sown in borders or 
large beds where they are to bloom 
and while the Sweet Sultans must 
be spring sown, the Cornflower if 
sown in October will bloom in May. 


A beautiful autumn flower if they are 
on their best behaviour and bloom 
on time, but like the little girl with 
the curl — when they are bad, they 
are horrid. — They take a great deal 
of room during a long season which 
can be often used to better advan- 
tage — planted with asters. 


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Deep blue 


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Cornflower 
Centaurea 

" Margaritse, fra- 
grant 
Sweet Sultan 
Suaveolens 
Moschata 

Cyanus-Emperor William 
(Rich blue cornflower) 


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If sown either indoors or in a frame, 
these Dahlias may be as cheaply 
raised as any common annual — 
with the chance of growing many 
beautiful and new varieties. The 
roots may be stored in sand in the 
cellar during winter like other bulbs. 

I class this seed with annuals from the 
fact that it must be sown in spring 
and cannot be left over winter in 
the hardy bed though it is a half 
hardy perennial. 


Fine daisy-shaped flower for colour- 
masses or picking. May be sown 
in the borders after bulbs have died 
away, and will bloom until hard frost. 


Our most beautiful annual vines. The 
common morning-glories should be 
kept from seeding in flower or vege- 
table gardens, because before you 
know it the strong tendrils will 
have twined about vegetables and 
flowers alike and strangled them. 


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Dahlia 

Single and cactus, mixed 
varieties 


Gaillardia, called Blanket 
Flower from its habit of 
covering the ground with 
bloom 

Gaillardia, picta Loren- 
ziania 


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A most useful " filler " for sunny nooks, 
— rockwork, — for covering bulb 
beds, and concealing mishaps and 
disappointments. Its fat, uninter- 
esting foliage, that makes mats a 
foot broad and proclaims it first 
cousin to " pusley," is covered dur- 
ing bright sunshine by a wealth of 
gay flowers two inches across and 
of satiny texture. 

Heat, and plenty of it, is what Portu- 
laca craves; backyards agree with 
it, also dry banks, and even sea- 
shore sand if there is a foothold of 
loam beneath. 


The familiar flower that sends up its 
spikes of flame from August until 
frost — should be sown in seed beds 
and set out from one to two feet 
apart. Watch out and do not put 
your salvia where it will come in 
competition with the crimson-hued 
hardy phlox tribe. Scarlet gera- 
niums and the crimson rambler 
rose in conjunction are not more 
painful. 


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PORTULACA 

Buy the separate colours 
and mix them yourself, 
as in the commercial 
mixtures both scarlet and 
pink appear in tints that 
set the teeth on edge 


Salvia Splendens-FLOWER- 

ing Sage 
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Cheerful flowers to line up against 
fences or at the back of shrubberies, 
whose seeds, if left to ripen, will 
secure the company of many birds 
for your garden through the autumn 
and early winter. 


The best summer-bedding plant that 
is raised from seed, which must be 
well soaked before sowing. The 
mammoth varieties are the most 
satisfactory, and among them are to 
be found shaded tints of rose and 
lavender that have decided per- 
fume. 


4-8 ft. 
8 ft. 


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Primrose -coloured 

Cucumerifolius hybridus fl. 
pi., a tine mixture of 
new varieties, decorative 
and good for cutting 
Single Russian (The Hen- 
yard Sunflower), large 
head heavy with seeds 


Verbena 

Defiance, scarlet bedder 

Candidissima 

Auriculseflora, various, with 
white eye 

Mammoth, mixed, large 
flowers, often fragrant, of 
many beautiful colours. 



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BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



THE WOMAN ERRANT 

BEING SOME CHAPTERS FROM THE WONDER BOOK OF 
BARBARA 

With Illustrations by Will Qrefe 

Cloth 12 mo $1.50 



" The sociology of the book is sound and clever. ... « The Woman 
Errant ' is a bright, inspiring book, and deserves to be read by all who have 
wit enough to grasp ideas levelled at shams and follies." 

— New York Evening Sun. 

"This clear-visioned writer, calmly surveying life from the wholesome 
vantage ground of a modest, contented suburban home, is not merely enter- 
taining each year a growing number of appreciative readers, but she is 
inculcating in her own incisive way much of that same wise and simple 
philosophy of life that forms the enduring charm of the essays of Charles 
Wagner." — New York Globe and Commercial Advertiser. 

" Barbara, whoever that delightful and gentle humorist is, never loses 
her temper or becomes bitter; the rapier glances in and out, the light of 
fancy playing upon its steel, but every thrust tells." — New York Sun. 

" Barbara has a kindly humor, a racy way of putting things, and occa- 
sionally a touch of unaffected pathos." — Providence Journal. 

"A mine of quaint fancies and unexpected turns of wit." 

— Chicago Tribune, 

" Full of snap and go and very entertaining." — Boston Herald. 

" Barbara is always fresh and delightful, compelling the reader to breathe 
the big spaces out of doors." — New York Times. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



People of the Whirlpool 

FROM THE EXPERIENCE BOOK OF A 
COMMUTER'S WIFE 

With Eight Full-page Illustrations 

Cloth 12mo $1.50 

" It cannot be that all the life which is grouped about the garden is 
fiction; there must be some background of reality somewhere; the story 
is too vital, too full of realism, too true to the life to be entirely a work of 
imagination. . . . The book is delightful in several ways; its prose style 
is sunny, optimistic, thoroughly happy in its philosophy of life, in its wit 
and humor, and the fidelity of its portraiture. All together it is a most 
charming volume." _ Brooklyn Eagle . 

"The whole book is delicious, with its wise and kindly humor, its just 
perspections of the true values of things, its clever pen pictures of people 
and customs, and its healthy optimism for the great world in general," 

— Philadelphia Telegraph. 

"It is peculiar in treatment, very quaint in style, and refreshingly 
original in every detail. ... It will be thoroughly liked by the judges of 
what is best." —Buffalo Commercial. 

"They who have read 'The Garden of a Commuter's Wife' know what 
to expect in this, ' The Experience Book ' of the same delightful Barbara, 
but to the uninitiated who light upon the book without preconceived 
' notions ' of what it is, it will come with a double note of delight." 

— New York Times. 



The Macmillan Company 

64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 



BY THE SAME AUTHOR 



THE GARDEN OF A COMMUTER'S WIFE 

RECORDED BY THE GARDENER 
With Eight Photogravure Illustrations 

Cloth, izmo. $1.50 



"'The Garden of a Commuter's Wife' is a legend that gives no hint 
of the wit and wisdom and graceful phrase within its covers. The Com- 
muter's charming woman writes of her suburban garden, her original ser- 
vants, and various other incidents which come in the course of living in a 
thoroughly human way. She reminds one of Elizabeth of ' German Gar- 
den ' fame in more ways than one, but being American she is broader, 
more versatile and humorous, if not also more poetic. It breathes an air 
of cheery companionship, of flowers, birds, all nature, and the warm 
affection of human friendship. Its philosophy is wholesome, unselfish, 
and kindly, and the Commuter's Wife, who writes her own memoirs, is 
one we would be glad to number among our friends." — Chicago Post. 

" By the inevitable action and reaction so interesting to watch, these 
books will undoubtedly in their term stimulate many a woman who pos- 
sesses a small plot of ground, the charms and possibilities of which she 
now only meagrely appreciates, to ' go and do likewise.' Which will be 
an excellent thing for the woman herself, as well as for the professional 
gardeners whom our new schools will raise up to pull their dilettante 
sisters out of bogs." — Boston Budget. 

" In brief, the book is delightfully sketchy and chatty, thoroughly 
feminine and entrancing. The writer represents herself as a doctor's 
daughter in a country town, who has married an Englishman, and after 
two years abroad has come home to live. Both husband and wife prefer 
the country to the city, and they make of their modes' estate a mundane 
paradise of which it is a privilege to have a glimpse. Surely it is no 
exaggeration to characterize this as one of the very best books of the 
holiday season thus far." — Providence Journal. 

" It is written with charm and is more than a mere treatise on what 
may be raised in the small lot of the suburban resident. 

" The author has not only learned to appreciate nature from intimate 
association, but has achieved unusual power of communicating these facts 
to others. There is something unusually attractive about the book." 

— The Philadelphia Inquirer. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

64-66 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 



By the Same Author 

AT THE SIGN OF THE FOX 

By "BARBARA" 

With Frontispiece in Colors 
Cloth i2mo $1.50 



" Her little pictures of country life are fragrant with a genuine love of 
nature, and there is fun as genuine in her notes on rural character. A 
travelling pieman is one of her most lovable personages; another is 
Tatters, a dog, who is humanly winsome and wise, and will not soon be 
forgotten by the reader of this very entertaining book." 

— New York Tribune. 

"... is" the story of the plucky daughter of a country-bred New Yorker 
of affairs and a Brooke of Virginia, ... a lovable girl, full of both romance 
and common sense. ... It is an admirable book for the summer season 
or any other." — Boston Daily Advertiser. 

" This story possesses, in common with its delightful predecessors, ' The 
Garden of a Commuter's Wife' and 'The People of the Whirlpool,' the 
charm of freshness, genuine love of a wholesome and simple life, keen 
appreciation of the joys of out-of-doors, a gentle and sound sense of humor, 
and true perception of character." — Louisville Times. 

" In skilful portrayal of types, in sharp but smiling shafts at the foibles 
and artificialities of modern society, in a rarely delicate humor, in a whole- 
some love of out-of-doors and all God's creatures, human or unhuman, and, 
above all, in the gentle preachment of a very sane and beautiful philosophy, 
— in all the qualities, in short, that make the charm and excellence of 
' Barbara's ' other books, her new one will not be found wanting." 

— New York Globe. 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
64-66 Fifth Avenue, New York 



MAY 28 1916 



